The same thing could be said of anyone and everyone who is a Christian – a child of God. “We love (Christ), because he first loved us” – I John 4:19. “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you” – John 15:16.
It is horribly sad that in most of Christendom the work of rescuing sinners has been taken out of the hand of God – by the hands of men. Among the liberals and agnostics, delivering men from their problems is the business of psychiatrists, sociologists, educators, legislators and seminar speakers. Among the neo-evangelicals and neo-fundamentalists salvation belongs to the sinner himself. He may need the help of the evangelist in teaching him what to think and what to pray, but it is the sinner who ultimately decides whether or not the death of Christ is worth his time and trouble. The natural result is the almost universal absence of any assurance about the sinner’s deliverance. If peace with God is dependent upon my perfection, then I might feel semi-comfortable today, but by tomorrow my confidence will be shattered because of a new crisis of sin in my life. Despite this, the nominal Christian hides from the deliberate teaching of the Word of God. The more that people learn of the LORD, the more personal self-esteem they loose. And modern religion seems to be all about self-esteem – feeling good about ourselves. And as a result, the more these people learn about God, the less comfortable they feel about their man-made salvation.
Unfortunately, in hiding from the conviction that the Bible produces, the sinner fails to learn that the Bible makes the saving sinners the work of God alone. Man cannot wash away the leopard’s spots or change the heart of a lion, but God can and does. Man cannot wash away his sin, nor remove the eternal debt that sin creates, but God does both, and He does them by the simple will of His heart. “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin.” Man cannot provide himself a Saviour, but Jehovah has – in the Second Person of the God-head. While I was playing games, without an eye to anything but enjoying myself… one day I looked up and there stood the Son of God with wounds in his hands and feet, a spear gash in his side, and love in His eye towards me. One day I opened up the Bible and found that God had chosen me before foundation of the world.
The Apostle had no intention of making Romans 16:13 into a theological treatise on the doctrine of election. And perhaps we shouldn’t either – but we certainly could. All that Paul was doing was making a comment on his friend Rufus, knowing that the people to whom he was writing all knew that the man had been chosen by God before he had been born.
There are only two places in the Bible which speak about being “chosen in Christ” – here and Ephesians 1:4. Listen once again as I read that context – “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that 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, To the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved.” In Romans 16 Paul was simply making a statement about Rufus’ spiritual condition. In Ephesians he was showing the link between all the spiritual blessings in Heavenly places and the people to whom he was writing. There should be no doubt about – and there can be no loss of – those things in heaven. Things which eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, nor imagination envisioned. The spiritual blessings in heavenly places are guaranteed to the people of God, because those people were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. That is not a proposition put forward by a leader of a debate team. It is to be accepted, because it comes before our eyes out of the Word of God. It is to be believed, because God cannot lie. It is to be treasured, because Paul meant it to be a blessing to our hearts. Or in the case of Rufus, it was simply a statement of fact. A fact which is true of every child of God.
Without implying that I understand everything that there is to know about this subject, let me share with you a very simple outline in order to analyze this thought.
Nearly forty years ago, I tried to grow a mustache in order to change my appearance. I wanted to look older; I wanted the respect that comes with age and position. I had a certain position, but I didn’t have the age and I wasn’t sure that I had the respect. I know that you’ve heard this story before, but I repeat it because it illustrates my point. About that time, we were was looking for an apartment in Calgary, Alberta, where we were going to work with the Ken Johnsons as missionaries. Judy and I found one that we liked, and we invited the Johnsons to look at it before we signed the papers on a one year lease. As we were talking to the apartment supervisor, she made a serious blunder: Nodding to Brother Johnson, she asked me if my father liked the apartment. The Johnsons and Oldfields have been laughing about that for nearly forty years now. I don’t think that Ken Johnson minds me being his son, but I am sure that Norma has a different opinion. Who our father is, is an important matter.
He who has chosen us before the foundation of the world, is the Architect, Engineer and Construction foreman of eternal salvation. Ephesians teaches that He who is eternal, made His choice before the existence of time, matter or space. Then He created the universe and placed man in that universe. And the One we are talking about is not only eternal and omnipotent, but omniscient. Without implying that His choice was based upon what He saw in us, He nevertheless saw us before there was light with which to see anything. Our Father is God enough to write a script and guarantee its completion 10,000 years or 10 million eons later.
God the Father hath chosen is in Christ before the foundation of the world. He chose Rufus, and He chose his mother, as two of His beloved saints. He chose Paul, and He has chosen millions of others, including many who are here today.
Some time ago, I had a pleasant gentleman call me, telling me that he had seen our church ad. In several of the local phone books, our ad outlines some of the things that we believe. Several points declare that we are radically different from 90% of all the other churches in this valley. So as he began to talk, I immediately wondered to which point he was going to refer. He said that he was a Christian who had been using the NASV Bible ever since his salvation. But he had been listening to people telling him that it is a corrupted Bible. And when he saw our advertisement, he thought that he would call and a ask few questions. As we chatted he made a statement that I have heard probably a hundred times: “I like the version that I use because I can understand it better than the King James.”
I am of the opinion that no one is going to understand God’s Word without the ministry of the Holy Spirit. Simplicity of words is not the solution to our spiritual ignorance. Humble, prayerful study, of course, is absolutely essential. And in that prayerful, Holy Spirit-directed study we will learn the will of God if we truly want it. But then there is the fact, that the most significant verses in the Bible do not need translations into second grade reading level. Ephesians 1:4 is one of the most profound statements in all the Bible and with a common education or a common dictionary, any one can grasp what it says. The problem is not in the words, but in the desire to understand this verse. The human heart doesn’t like to hear what this has to say.
As seen in the commentaries’ desire to change what Paul says about Rufus into a mere commendation, we see that not even all theologians want to acknowledge God’s authority over the human soul.
Common sense tells us that before creation God knew the exact number of people who would ever live. Spiritual sense tells us that God actually established that number, and it would not be exceeded or missed. Ephesians 1:4 declares and teaches that before creation God a certain group of those people whom He selected, upon which to bestow all spiritual blessings in heavenly places. That is what this verse says in plain understandable English. The letter to the Ephesians was written to a portion of that elect group. And, by way of inspiration and preservation, it was written to us as well. The word “chosen” is not a difficult word. A substitution with the word “elect” doesn’t either help or hinder our understanding. The word “select” means essentially the same thing. And all of these words are perfectly understandable by nearly every one of us.
What God did before the creation of the world was to choose to save a great multitude of specific individual sinners.
There are some people who try to avoid the obvious by saying it was not “us” who were chosen. They try to imply that it was Christ who was chosen by the Father. Later, all those, who in time decide to repent of their sins and to believe on the Lord Jesus, are then incorporated into the salvation plan of God. But clearly, it was Rufus himself who was chosen, not Christ. It is all those individuals whom God chose, not Christ who is the eternal and infinite son of God.
To begin to understand the words “in him” we have to go back to Ephesians 1:3. Just as the spiritual blessings in Heavenly places are “in Christ,” so is the election. By that I mean that everything about our relationship to God… Every blessing, every promise, every ounce of forgiveness… The new birth, the adoption, justification, sanctification, the righteousness… Are all vitally linked to the Lord Jesus. I love what I read in I Corinthians 1 – “But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification and redemption. That according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.” Just as our future blessings and current justification are in Christ Jesus so is our past election.
When we come to the subject of election – Who made the choice is obvious: What was done is just as obvious: GOD made a choice to eternally bless some sinners, who were just as unworthy as all the rest of the world of sinners. The manner of that blessing and choice was to be accomplished in or through the Lord Jesus. And the choosing was done apparently before anything existed besides the Lord Himself.
And that brings us to one of the most foolish arguments ever spent upon this doctrine.
The argument that eternal election gives the elected ones permission to live as ungodly as the Devil is a lie. It is a calumny (kal-um-ne). That is a defamation of the Truth and of the God of that Truth.
This is just a portion of a huge subject. But Rufus had been elected unto obedience and the sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. He had been chosen to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled. He had been chosen and ordained to go and bring forth fruit – good fruit. He had been chosen to salvation through sanctification of the spirit and belief of the truth. And so have all the rest whom God chose, called and saved. I could multiply these verses a dozen times. “We are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” As the elect of God we are expected to “put on bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness and longsuffering.”
Those who are born again have been chosen to eternal life – an holy life. And that eternal life is eternal because it is rooted in the eternal Saviour – our holy Saviour. It is true that to whom Christ has given eternal life, shall never have that life revoked. But it is not true that those eternal ones can live eternally and morally filthy at the same time. Those whom the Lord has chosen, have been chosen that they should be “holy and without blame before him.” They have been elect by God to be faultless, unblameable, without blemish and spot. In other words, they have been called to be “saints”. No chosen-one has been elected with God’s approval to continue in sin. We have not been chosen to be adulterers and fornicators, but to be saints. We have not been elected to hate anything, except sin. We have not been chosen or saved in order to lust and to covet after worldly wealth. We not been redeemed in order to fritter away and waste our few years upon this earth. We have been “chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world” and we have been “predestinated to the adoption of children to the praise of the glory of his grace.”
There is no room whatsoever in this doctrine or this verse for the glorification of sin. There is no room in this verse for us to boast in ourselves. There is nothing here but reason to praise the Lord Who has saved an army of sinners purely out of His grace. There is no room here for grace and the love of sin.
Would you like to know whether or not you have been chosen as Rufus and his mother had been chosen? Would you like to know if God is planning on blessing you with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ Jesus? Then ask yourself if you have a yearning to be holy and without blame before the Holy God? Ask yourself whether or not you have humbly repented of your sinfulness before God. Ask whether or not you are trusting in the love and blood of Christ Jesus to redeem you from your sin? The questions most appropriate for the sinner revolve around repentance and faith. “If you from sin are longing to be free, humbly look to the lamb of God.”