By: Annagail Lynes
Did Jesus die for all or just the elect? That was a question posed on a message board that I was glancing through a few weeks ago.
At first I thought it was a joke, then as I read the responses, I realized how confused these teens were. They were making a very good case (using Scriptures) that God only chose a certain amount of people to go to heaven and so He causes the rest to sin, so they wouldn’t be eligible. Does that sound like a very fair or loving Father to you? It doesn’t to me.
Throughout the messages, I couldn’t find one who used John 3:16. Color me surprised because that is the first Scripture I memorized. And trust me, I have memorized a lot of them.
But for anyone who might not know what it says, John 3:16 reads “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.”
God gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life. Other versions say whoever instead of whosoever. Merriam-Webster Online Directory defines whoever as “whatever person : no matter who.” No matter who. Jesus died for no matter who believed in Him. Not a certain group of people. No matter who believed in Him.
But you might be saying, “That’s just one Scripture.”
“And they said, Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house” (Acts 16:31).
“That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved” (Romans 10:9).
“The Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance” (2 Peter 3:9).
Then why does the Bible refer to the elect? When the Bible refers to the elect, it is referring to you and me when we accept Jesus as our Saviour.
But some want to say that God only chose certain people, that only certain people are referred to as the elect. The word elect, as defined by the Merriam-Webster Online Directory, means “carefully selected: chosen.”
Jesus said in John 15:16, “Ye have not chosen me, but I have chosen you, and ordained you, that ye should go and bring forth fruit, and that your fruit should remain: that whatsoever ye shall ask of the Father in my name, he may give it you.”
God chose you. You didn’t chose Him.
“According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love:” (Ephesians 1:4).
He chose you before the foundation of the world. God didn’t sit up in Heaven and say, “I think I’ll make this one sin, so he’ll go to hell” or “I’ll make this one be good, so that she’ll come live with me.”
If He did, the plan of redemption wouldn’t work for all of us.
People want to make excuses for not getting their lives right with God, so they read certain parts of the Bible and decide that God only came for a certain few. When if they read the Bible as a whole, they would find a very different picture.
I am sure you’ve heard of Abraham. He was a very wealthy man, who loved the Lord with all his heart. His nephew Lot lived in Sodom and Gomorrah, a place that was very sinful and grevious in the sight of the Lord. And God told Abraham that He planned to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah.
Abraham negotiated with God. I don’t know about you, but I don’t think I have enough guts to negotiate with the Creator of the Universe.
Let’s take a look at that dialogue:
Then Abraham approached him and said: “Will you sweep away the righteous with the wicked? What if there are fifty righteous people in the city? Will you really sweep it away and not spare the place for the sake of the fifty righteous people in it? Far be it from you to do such a thing-to kill the righteous with the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
The LORD said, “If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.”
Then Abraham spoke up again: “Now that I have been so bold as to speak to the Lord, though I am nothing but dust and ashes, what if the number of the righteous is five less than fifty? Will you destroy the whole city because of five people?”
Abraham negotiated down to ten people. All God had to find was ten people who did right in Sodom and Gomorrah. But alas, ten could not be found, so God sent an angel to tell Lot to take and his wife and two daughters and flee from Sodom and Gomorrah before it was punished.
This paints a picture of the fairness of God. When the flood came, God made Noah save the righteous–his family, the only people whose hearts were turned toward God.
Peter said in Acts 10:34, “Of a truth I perceive that God is no respecter of persons:”
God is not a respecter of persons. What He has done for one, He will do for you, if accept Jesus into your heart. If He sent His Son to die for one, then He sent Jesus to die for us all. Otherwise God would not be true to His Word.
Numbers 23:19 warns us, “God is not a man, that he should lie; neither the son of man, that he should repent: hath he said, and shall he not do it? or hath he spoken, and shall he not make it good?”
God cannot lie. If He said something, He has to see it through. He said whosoever believeth on Jesus would have everlasting life. You are included in that whosoever. So have you accepted Jesus into your heart? If not, what are you waiting for?
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