Election: A Doctrine of the Future, Not the Past

Debates rage on even today as to the nature of our salvation. How are we saved? By the unrestrained sovereign and therefore arbitrary choice of God which we have no way to resist, or by the free will of rational modern man willing and able to either receive God's free and gracious gift or reject it out of hardness of heart.

Both answers to the question of the reason for our salvation (both the Reformed and Armenian) place the dominant emphasis of the question on the reason for our salvation. What are we saved by? Which leads us to say things like we are saved because [insert opinion here]. This focus leads us to look backward. Whether to our conversion experience when we first received Christ or all the way back to eternity past when the Spirit of God purposed to set His affections on a limited number of people. Either way, we walk backwards. Proceeding forward through time but constantly fixed on the events of the past.

Instead, I believe the purpose of the New Testament (and even the Old) in revealing the mystery of God's predestining a people, was not for us to look back but for us to look forward. He tells us that He has chosen us in order that we might live in a certain way. He is looking for a response.

To walk facing forward in this truth is to stop asking "By what was I saved?" and start asking "For what am I saved?" Instead of saying, "We are saved because...," we need to start saying, "We are saved so that...". After all it is for works, not by them that we are saved. To focus on the method or the how behind our salvation is very much like a junior high kid retelling his friends how he got on the basketball team. Depending on his mood it was because he had such a stellar tryout, or because the coach had already decided who he was going to pick. Either way for this kid to continue bragging about his position without any action is ridiculous. Why then do we suppose we can stop and argue about how we got here? The focus, now that the kid is on the team, should be asking the coach what his role is on the team. "Why [as in for what purpose] am I here?" he should ask the coach. The training and practice, and game time starts now.

The Bible teaches us that we are blessed to be a blessing. Like wise I believe that we need to start believing and walking out the fact that we are chosen in order to be choosers. God chose us (the outcast, socially awkward losers who had no chance of saving themselves from the perils of an eternal Hell) so that we might go to the outcasts, the socially awkward losers around us to save them from the same perils. We are redeemed that we might be redeemers. We are healed, that we might be healers. We are forgiven, that we might be forgivers. We are loved, that we might be lovers. We are freed, that we might be freedom-fighters. We are blessed, that we might be a blessing.

So why are you saved? Not by what, but for what. What is the destiny that God has chosen for you? What are the good works that He has set out before the creation of the world for you to walk in? How will you be conformed to the image of the Son that He has chosen for you to be conformed to? For what have you been saved?