God did not arbitrarily draw the line between the saved and the unsaved. The election of believers can only be properly understood in the light of the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
A long time before anyone of us existed God predestined Jesus to be the Redeemer of the world. Then, for no apparent inherent reason, of all people God elected Abraham, Isaac and Jacob to deliver Jesus into the human family. And then, in and through Jesus, God made His election effective for everyone who trusts in Jesus – regardless of our religious, national, ethnic or racial backgrounds.
Election and redemption of believers are not two independent events or categories. Notice that, according to Ephesians 1:3-11, anything that has ever happened to us in regard to predestination, has already taken place “in Jesus” for the purpose of “bringing all things in heaven and on earth together under one head, even Christ”. Eph. 1:10. NIV.
When Paul debates “God’s sovereign choice” in the Letter to the Romans (chapters 9, 10, 11) he is not doing it to justify an arbitrary will of God in regard to the final destiny of people, or to argue on behalf of “limited atonement”. He is trying to tell the Jews of his days, who were steeped in religious nationalism and national self-importance, that just as much as it was God’s sovereign will to choose formerly Abraham, Isaac and Jacob out of so many other human families, peoples and nations, because of Jesus God now has equal sovereign right to choose anyone else (Romans 10:11), without apologizing to the Jews, or to anyone else for doing so.
No two independent lines of salvation exist anywhere in the Bible; one that goes through a random act of election of an arbitrary God, and another one through the cross of Jesus. The line of election and the line of the cross are one and the same line. They are the two facets of the same truth.
In fact, everything is very simple: “To all who received Him. to those who believed in His name, He gave the right to become children of God – children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.” John 1:12.13. NIV
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