What does it mean to be elect? (July 14)

Image, The Seven Corporal Works of Mercy, Pieter Brueghel the Younger (1559)​
Readings Psalm 24 and Ephesians 1:3-14
 
I think there is a sweet spot when it comes to a social gathering or group trip, which is to be included, but not responsible. I want to come and enjoy the activities but far be it from me to plan, chase up, handle logistic or funds. I want to be there, but I don’t want to be responsible for everyone who is there. Be a groomsman, not a best man. And I can justify such an attitude because this is what we learn from this most beautiful reading in Ephesians. When it comes to our salvation, our life in God, we are included, but not responsible.
 
For God chose us in Christ, before the foundations of the world. In God’s perfect freedom, before any need or appeal, God elected to be with and for us. In perfect love God determined to send Christ into the world, so that we might be found holy and blameless. God took the responsibility for our state, and destined us for adoption through Jesus Christ. This was no concession, nor was it performed conditionally. It was done according to the good pleasure of God’s will for no other reason that we might praise the glorious grace bestowed upon us in Christ. In short, God has chosen to adopt us, before we could do anything to warrant or require such a grace – we are included, not responsible.
 
Now, for those who may have spent some time in church before, what we are discussing here is the doctrine of election – a squirrely doctrine which has confounded and befuddled many a Christian, has lain underneath many a controversy, and often been deplorably employed to violent ends. Let’s explore a little.
 
Christians start thinking about election because of passages like this in Ephesians, which speak of God choosing or electing people (or in the case of Israel, a whole nation) either for a purpose or redemption. They also begin to consider election as an extension of thinking about grace and sin – we (as sinners) cannot will ourselves to faith, and thus receive it as a gift from God’s grace… however, not everyone has faith and if that is not due to effort is it because God has not chosen them? Here you start getting into the issue of logically needing to confess that an all loving, all powerful God only chooses some, only gives saving faith to some, while others God predestines to eternal damnation. All of a sudden God doesn’t sound quite so loving, and the good news of the gospel becomes bad news for the masses. And it is not that the awkwardness was lost on those developing these theologies; both Augustine and Calvin cautioned against teaching predestination in excess as it could dishearten and confuse. And to their credit, both had pastoral concerns in mind; the doctrine was meant to be an assurance to the faithful that their salvation lay in the hands of God, not their own efforts, and both instructed the faithful against trying to speculate over who was and was not chosen, but to treat everyone as a sibling.
 
However, by and large, this did not happen. And a system by which some are determined chosen by God and others not, can not only make one an arrogant neighbour, but can all too easily be laid atop other systems of human hierarchies and divisions. Indeed, the wretched sin of colonialism often ran on a narrative where the chosen people came to a new promised land and were thus justified (if not obligated) to dispossess the reprobate indigenous and seek to deprive them of their culture, language, and religion (deemed to be deficient compared to the language, culture, and religion of the elect through which God has determined to move).
 
Does all this theological malpractice forever problematise the intended comfort of the teaching that we have been chosen since the foundations of the world? Can we continue to consider ourselves the adopted and elected without raising ourselves aloft from others?
 
There are two moves that reconfigure the notion of chosenness and election. The first is to move away from the individual. We cast aside the notion that God treats humanity like petals of a flower, “I love thee, I love thee not.” Instead, the decision God makes before the foundation of the world is a decision for all of humanity. God decrees to elect Jesus Christ, and in the election of Christ all humanity is reconciled to God. “In freedom and love as defined in and through Christ, God has chosen to be the God of human beings.”[1] God has chosen to be with and for us, bestowing a spirit of adoption so that none should fall back. This move maintains the reality of sin while honouring the sufficiency of Christ’s grace and the perfection of God’s love (as Paul would have it, just as Adam’s trespass led to condemnation for all, so Christ’s act of righteousness leads to justification and life for all).
 
There are not the elect and unelect, chosen and the not, there is simply Jesus Christ – the stone the builders rejected but God chose, in whom all receive the spirit of adoption. As fully God, Jesus elects, and as fully human Jesus is elected, and this act belongs to us all. To draw on the language of our psalm today, Jesus is the one who not only was with God when the world was founded on the seas, but he is the one - who with clean hands and pure heart - ascends to the mountain of the Lord to receive the blessing from God which is then shared with each and all; for such is the King of Glory. 
 
The second move is to refocus what election teaches us. It is not, in the first instance, about individual salvation. It is about the task and calling of the church. For just as Jesus was predestined, or elected to be our head, this is so we can be his body.[2] God’s election is a promise that amid the “ruins of nations… the church of God will remain.” This is the word we speak over those commissioned into ministry: the God who called you will not fail you. Election is the promise that before all things God determined to be with and for a people. This with and for, leads to a with and for – which ties election to church’s mission. As those not responsible for our salvation, we are instead included in the work of God in the world. “Being elected means being elected for service to God and others.”[3] Election is not set apart from, but set apart for. Set apart and set alight to stand with the world in its struggles. It does not make us “into the ‘privileged ones’ over against those who are ‘rejected’; instead God’s gracious election sends us out not only to serve God but to serve our fellow human beings and God’s good creation as well.”[4]
 
Most acutely, we are called to stand with and serve those who the world treats as rejected, as lesser, as condemned. We are called to recognise that those our political and economic systems cast off are the beloved God has chosen to be for and with. These too are chosen in Christ since the foundations of the world. Worldly injustice and prejudice are affronts to the divine choice to love. If the church has any special standing in the world, it is only because – by the gift of faith – we have heard this proclamation. The church is that corner of God’s world who recognise that God has chosen to be the God of humankind, that God has chosen to graciously bestow upon the human what rightly belongs to Christ, that God has chosen to love us with an inseparable love. The church confesses this truth and then acts accordingly – living lives of service, pursuing justice and mercy for the world. We lay aside responsibility for salvation, the responsibility of determining in and out. Instead, we give thanks for the joy and meaning found in being included (elected) to pursue God’s work until in the fullness of time, when all things in heaven and on earth are gathered lovingly unto God.


[1] Margit Ernst-Habib, “Chosen By Grace: Reconsidering the Doctrine of Predestination,” 87. As R. Jenson writes, “the one sole object of eternal election is Jesus with his people.” Systematic Theology Vol 2., 175.

[2] Paraphrasing Augustine.

[3] Ernst-Habib, 88.

[4] Ernst-Habib, 90.