Election and Predestination Were
Never Unto Salvation but Unto Service
2 Thessalonians 2:13: "God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth."
Doesn't that sound like God has chosen certain ones to be saved, which of course would mean that the rest are chosen to damnation by default?
Response: What this means, service instead of election, is that for those who can see they are born-again, chosen before the foundations of the world which gives us comfort having fulfilled God's requirement in Scripture to trust in Jesus, we know we are the elect predestined by God foreknowing our free-choice. The works that flow from new birth are works of service.
It is a very great sin and perversion of Scripture to change God trying to convince us we are sinners into the brutal legalism that none can believe in Christ without the god of Calvinism irresistibly making him and does not provide sufficient grace to others to have the choice. That can only ever lead to pompous pride which is a big turn off and turns people away from Christ, even keep someone in a false salvation. What love is this?
Christ introduces and explains John 3:16 ("For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.") with a reference to the incident in the wilderness involving the brazen serpent: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." This reference is to Numbers 21. Let's notice the wording there: "Every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live....If a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived" (Nu 21:8,9). This was the way Christ explained John 3:16. The Calvinists say that Christ was not talking about the whole world but only the world of the elect. Christ's example shows that this is not the case.
Christ does not allow this misinterpretation. Here is one of the reasons Calvinists generally avoid references to the Old Testament. Calvinism, far from being supported there, is refuted. It was not the homes of a few elect over which the destroying angel passed but every home where the blood had been applied. Who went through the Red Sea on dry land? An elect few? No, everyone who had been delivered from Egypt by the blood. Who ate of the manna in the wilderness? For whom did the water flow out of the rock? Who was led by the pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night? Was it an elect few among the Israelites? No, it was all of them, even though all did not believe.
Such examples could be multiplied by the dozens. In comparison, the few verses of doubtful interpretation that Calvinists hold out to prove their case are far from conclusive on their side. Even 2 Thessalonians 2:13 includes the proof that there is more involved than God simply choosing some to heaven. Something more is required of man: "through...belief of the truth."
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