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Unconditional Election

Submitted by Brandon on Tue, 07/07/2009 - 05:44
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How do you respond to verses like I Peter 1:2 which say that God elected predestined people to be sanctified and obedient to Jesus based on God's foreknowledge? It seems like the verse is saying that God foreknew people's behavior and then predestined them according to that behavior.

This question goes to the

Submitted by Daniel on Wed, 07/08/2009 - 19:12.

This question goes to the heart of what election is. Does God choose me because He saw some merit in me, or does he choose me because he loved me when there was nothing lovable in me at all. The next question is, if God looked ahead into the future to judge your worthiness, what would He see? Given our fallen condition, he would have seen nothing worthy of saving. To place this answer squarely in Scripture, compare Corinthians 2:14 to 1 John 4:19.

Cor 2:14
The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned.

1 John 4:19
We love because he first loved us.

So our ability to love anyone (let alone our ability to love God) depends on God first loving us. Loving God is impossible without God first loving us; His initial work to open our eyes to accept the things of the Spirit of God. Bottom line, if God looked ahead to see what we would choose, He would have seen us rejecting Him; not understanding Him.

In 1 Peter 1:1-2, foreknowledge is fore-loving. Think about Adam and Eve: "Adam KNEW his wife and she conceived a son." God foreknew you, (fore-loved you) and so elected you to be His own. I like the way God's foreknowledge is described in Deuteronomy 7:6b-8a...

"...The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you..."

-djq