Election is the expression of God’s will for every believer to receive His highest and best: John 15:16.

Title: Election is the expression of God’s will for every believer to receive His highest and best: John 15:16.

 

John 15:16 "You did not choose Me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should remain, that whatever you ask of the Father in My name, He may give to you.

 

God has omniscience: God knows all the knowable and the probable, past, present, and future, and He expresses His knowledge in the divine decree.

 

With omniscience God was powerful to decree human history.

 

The decree of God is His eternal (always existed), holy (perfect integrity), wise (the application of omniscience to creation), and sovereign purpose, comprehending simultaneously all things that ever were or will be in their causes, conditions (status), successions (interaction with others that leads to certain decisions), relations, and determining their certain futurition.

 

This definition emphasizes the fact that God knew simultaneously in eternity past all decisions and their effects in time. This simultaneously includes everything that God would do sovereignly and everything that His creatures would do for or against Him.

 

The result of the heretical doctrine of Calvanism, hyper or moderate, is the God is the author of sin and evil.

 

The decree of God is Sovereign, but it is also permissive, allowing for the free will of man and the results of man’s decisions. All of the secondary results of choice are in the decree.

 

Election is the expression of God’s will for every believer to receive His highest and best. Election follows faith in Christ, and is not the cause of it.

 

Man’s destiny is the outworking of his own thinking, his motivation, his decisions, and his actions, all of which God knew simultaneously in eternity past.

 

Yet man is not alone in the effects of his decisions. All believers must remember this.

 

Man’s volition or self-determination is the immediate cause. But God knew in eternity past what this decision would be and what our thoughts and motives that preceded it would be, and what the actions that followed it would be. That is omniscience. The decree of God removes no man from what within the sphere of his own experience is the outworking of his own choice, acting from his own judgment — based on his own desires, his own motives, his own thoughts and his own circumstances. Whatever free will choice anyone makes on a given occasion in time is the execution of the divine decrees. There are no surprises to the omniscience of God. No decree itself, therefore, opposes human freedom.

 

If we are going to understand what you have been elected to we must understand what you have been created for.

 

Selection: God imputed human life to your body at birth. God also imputed Adam’s original sin to your genetically formed old sin nature.

 

Therefore it is impossible to establish your own perfect righteousness. Righteousness cannot be established by works, by the Law, by human good, morality, human power, or any other so called energy that the fallen creature can strain to produce.

 

God selected every member of the human race. But due to the fall all of us are born spiritually dead and separate from God; not from our person sins, rather from our position in Adam.

 

ROM 5:12 Therefore, just as through one man [Adam] sin [imputed sin] entered into the world, and death [spiritual death] through sin [imputed sin], and so death [spiritual death] spread to all men, because all sinned [in the same way as Adam]

 

This is the genius of God. Allowing the fall gave God carte blache over all fallen creatures. Either they would die in what they did not do or they would be saved through the immaculate display of God’s grace. In one way we all fall into the pit, but in another way, we all have an opportunity to accept God’s deliverance. God chose to take all our sins upon Himself. And this, He made a public display of so that all of us could see it. His love was opened to the eyes of the whole world through a sacrifice and death that superabounded beyond anything that any person could do.

 

ROM 5:13 for until the Law sin was in the world; but sin is not imputed when there is no law.

 

ROM 5:14 Nevertheless death reigned from Adam until Moses, even over those who had not sinned in the likeness of the offense of Adam, who is a type of Him who was to come.

 

There are three forms of sin. Imputed sin, inherent sin, and personal sin.

 

Imputed sin - Adam’s original sin is imputed to the genetically formed OSN at birth. Adam is the federal head of the human race so all sinned when Adam sinned.

 

This is genius on the part of God.

 

Adam did not have imputed righteousness. Adam did not have eternal security. Adam was perfect, but he was not imputed with God’s righteous; only God can make one righteous.

 

So Adam was perfect and his wife was perfect, without sin and would lose that perfection when the sin was committed. Would you rather that over imputed righteousness which is through non-meritorious faith in Christ? Would you rather take a shot at perfection in the Garden or would you rather have eternal life and eternal security through one decision to believe in Christ?

 

The fall and subsequent imputed sin means that man is born condemned and that God can only deal with Him through His Justice.

 

Before the fall, perfect man’s relationship with God worked through God’s love. There was no hindrance for God to love a perfect creature, but after the fall the love connection had to change to the justice connection.

 

Salvation has become the meritorious work of God because after the fall condemned man’s contact with God is now through His Justice rather than His Love.

 

This is such an important point to every believer’s spiritual life. You have to know God through His Justice and not His love. Love comes after Justice is fulfilled.

 

A fallen creature can never satisfy God’s justice, so either God would leave us all in our just condemnation or He would Himself become the perfect payment for sin.

 

Inherent sin [OSN] - a direct result of Adam’s original sin and genetically passed down through the biological father to his progeny.

 

This is the OSN through which certain genetic handicaps are passed and the fairly consistent temptation to sin originates.

 

Without AOS there would be no inherent sin so this is a secondary cause. And although AOS and inherent sin [OSN] motivate and tempt us to commit personal sins, we would all have eventually committed personal sins in the same likeness as Adam if we were born perfect.

 

Personal sin - when temptation from the OSN combines with volition then a decision against the will of God and His commands is born.

 

Personal sins were never imputed to anyone. They were imputed to Christ. Therefore, after selection the issue becomes Christ. Faith in Him guarantees election.

 

If we were all born perfect, it would be up to us to maintain our perfection for all of our lives as well as all of eternity. God removed this burden from us. This is why allowing the fall is a genius act of God. God took the burden of sin upon Himself in the form of Christ and so through one act of non-meritorious faith a person is elected forever.

 

Any member of the human race is either in Adam or in Christ. Personal sin, genetic issues, and environmental hindrances are not in view here, just two men.