I came to Christ at the age of 4 or 5 years old. I was very little but I still remember the moment. My mom shared the sweet news with me and I ran to my bedroom to kneel before my bed and ask Jesus to come and live in my heart. I ran back to her and asked what to pray next… at that age, I didn’t understand too much. And for many years even as I studied many of the basics still eluded me. I believed I needed saving ‘from my sins.’ That I would go to hell if Jesus didn’t come ‘live in my heart’, and that was the extent of it for a while.
I believed that me making that choice, was my ticket to salvation. That it wasn’t known to anyone until that moment, that I would be a member of God’s family. I could pretty much pat myself on the back for the great choice I’d made. God made way for salvation, but I reached for it. It was as if I’d been drowning and God threw me a life line in His sweet grace, and said “just grab on!”, and I reached.
Yet if we consult God’s word about the state we are in before salvation, it states we are dead in our sins. Not just a little lost, or floating around underwater almost unconscious,… we are dead.
And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world…
Ephesians 2:1-2
And you, who were dead in your trespasses…
Colossians 2:13
A dead man has no ability to reach for a life line. A dead man, can do nothing. That was my state, and your state, before we received salvation. There was no ability to even choose God. So then, how do we have salvation? How did we receive it if we lay lifeless in our sin? God chose for Himself a group of His elected people. We are chosen by Him. This is a hard concept for many to understand. I avoided romans nine and many other passages in scripture because I didn’t like it. I wanted to know I had the control. That I was the one to CHOOSE God and anyone had that choice. But the truth is, we don’t have a choice. If we did, we’d choose sin. That’s our sinful, fleshly inclination. Sin. We wouldn’t have the knowledge or ability or life, as we lay dead in our sin, to choose God. We best be GLAD God didn’t leave it up to our own decision making ability.
Now, the next question everyone will ask, or possibly the first one…
Why didn’t God chose everyone? And why were some chosen and some not? HOW is that fair? The people of Paul’s day were asking the same thing. So he explains,
“Is there injustice on God’s part? By no means! For He says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So then it depends not on human will or exertion, but on God, who has Mercy.”
Romans 9:14-16
In the first chapters of Romans we learn that we are totally depraved and deserving of God’s judgment. If we truly got what was fair, it would be an eternity in hell separated from God forever. The gospel is not about us receiving justice, but about us receiving mercy. The just punishment of our sin has been poured out on Jesus who took it willingly in our place. Paul is telling us that instead of marvelling at the mystery of why some are saved and why some are not, we should be left in awe that God in His mercy and Grace has chosen to save anyone. The only thing that we deserve is judgment, but God has poured out His mercy on us.
-The Dailey Grace Company-
God is the standard of JUSTICE and FAIRNESS we should be looking up too, not holding Him to our own human standard of fair. Romans tells us God makes some vessels of wrath. He endures them patiently so He can use them show us His Glory, and also His wrath. He reveals to us His character bit by bit. Judas was a vessel of wrath,… Pharaoh was a vessel of wrath with a hardened heart.
For the scripture says to Pharaoh, ‘For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I might show my power in you, and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth. So then He has mercy on whomever He wills, and He hardens whomever He wills.
Romans 9:17-18
Now I know we don’t like that. I wrestled with it. This doesn’t make God sound very loving is what I thought. But Paul anticipated this to bring confusion to a human mind, so he asks us
“But who are you, O man, to answer back to God? Will what is molded say to the molder, Why have you made my like this? Has the potter no right over the clay, to make out of the same lump one vessel for honourable use and another for dishonourable use? What if God, desiring to show His wrath and to make known His power, has endured with much patience vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, in order to make know the riches of His Glory for vessels of mercy, which He prepared beforehand for His Glory…” Romans 9:20-23
God’s love is often preached solely, but without revealing to us the rest of His character. He’s loving and merciful, but He is also JUST and WRATHFUL and POWERFUL. He knows exactly what He’s doing in order to show us all of who He is. We should be brought to humility, and worship as we grow to understand the doctrine of election. That God CHOSE us, because He LOVES US. Not of anything we’ve done, or even of our own choosing of Him. It was all Him. How very thankful we should be to be vessels of mercy though we in no way deserved it. We should be in awe and worship at His feet.
This gentleman explains our sinful state pretty well!