Miguel
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The Pleasure of God in Election
BY JOHN PIPER
Deuteronomy 7:6-8; 10:14-15
BEFORE THERE WAS anything at all created, God was supremely happy in Himself. He was and always is totally self-sufficient. He has no needs, and so He cannot be bribed; He has no flaws, and so cannot be blackmailed; and He has no weaknesses, and so He cannot be coerced or forced. This is the concise way in which Psalm 115: puts this truth: "Our God is in the heavens: he hath done whatsoever he has pleased."
What this means is that God did not create the earth and the heavens to make up for some deficiency in Himself. He created because it’s the very nature of His fullness to overflow. He rejoiced to make the universe as a kind spin-off of His overflowing delight in His own glory.
Moreover, in this world that God has created, the great passion of His heart is to spread His reputation. Again and again and again in scripture, we read that God acts for His name’s sake. It is His pleasure to magnify in all that He does, His fame and renown, and the honor of His name.
Greatest love. When you stop and think about it this is the most loving thing that God could ever do; because the greatest benefit that human beings could ever receive is to know and share in the glory of God. So, when God aims to make His glorious name known and admired and praised and enjoyed in every people and tongue and tribe and nation, He is acting in overflowing grace and love because this and this alone will satisfy the longings of the human heart.
The means by which God makes a name for His glorious grace in all the world is to choose a people for Himself. As God Himself says in Jeremiah 13:11:
For as the girdle cleaveth to the loins of a man, so have I caused to cleave unto me the whole house of Israel and the whole house of Judah, saith the LORD; that they might be unto me for a people, and for a name, and for a praise, and for a glory.
In other words, to extend the pleasure that God has in His own name, He calls out a people to enjoy and praise and proclaim that name. The Bible calls these people "the elect." This pleasure of God in election is what I would like to talk about in this message. We will take our starting point from the election of Israel in the Old Testament and then turn to the New Testament to see that believers are really the elect in whom God delights to freely save.
The Old Testament Figure
In the Old Testament, there are innumerable verses where God speaks of His delight in choosing the Israelites from among all peoples of the earth with whom He had a special relationship. A good example is Deuteronomy 10:14, 15:
Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the LORD’s thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is. Only the LORD had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day.
Right to choose. Notice first the contrast between these two sentences. Verse 14 declares that everything in heaven and on earth belongs to God, and then verse 15 follows by saying that this is the God that chose His people.
The election of Israel, you see, is set against the backdrop of God’s ownership of the whole universe. Through it, God makes it clear to the Israelites that He was not locked in to choosing them. He had the right and privilege to choose just anyone on the face of the earth.
Moreover, when God identifies Himself to the people as "thy God," He is not putting Himself on a par with the god of Egypt or the god of Canaan or the god of any other pagan nation. He owns those gods and their peoples. So, if it had pleased Him, He could have chosen a totally different people to accomplish His purposes. The point of putting verses 14 and 15 together in this way, therefore, is to stress the freedom and the universal rights and authority of God.
Free to delight. Secondly, notice this statement in verse 15: "the LORD had a delight in thy fathers to love them." The way God exercises His freedom is to set His love upon their fathers. That means that God freely chose to make Abraham, Isaac and Jacob the object of His delight and love. God’s love for the fathers of Israel was free and merciful; it wasn’t constrained by anything that they were in their Jewishness or in their virtue.
One of the ways God makes this clear is that when Abraham has two sons, Ishmael and Isaac, God only chooses one of them, Isaac. And when Isaac has two sons, Jacob and Esau, even before they are born, God only chooses Jacob not Esau to continue the line of His chosen people. This important truth is understood in Romans 9:10-13:
And not only this; but when Rebecca also had conceived by one, even by our father Isaac; (For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated.
Undeserved love. Even in the Old Testament, this fact is brought out in Deuteronomy 7:6,7, which describes the election of Israel this way:
For thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth. The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people.
This passage stresses again the freedom of God’s grace in loving and choosing Israel. It says flatly that God did not set his love upon them nor choose them because of their greatness. In fact, God reminds them that they are very small, meaning that by man’s standards they are unlikely candidates for being chosen.
Why then did God choose them? We read in verse 8:
But because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.
First, it’s because God loves them. Now, remember verse 7 has already declared that He doesn’t set His love upon them because they qualify for or deserve His love. No, He delights in them simply because He loves them. That is what I mean by the freedom of God in election.
God’s faithfulness. In verse 8, God gives a second reason why He chose Israel and brought them out of Egypt. He was keeping the oath which he swore to their fathers. Does this mean that God’s choice to love and save wasn’t free after all? Was He bound to save them?
To the extent that God is faithful to His promises, God is bound by His oath. But the oath referred to here was given to Abraham in divine freedom in the first place. It was then confirmed to Isaac, not Ishmael, in freedom; and it was further confirmed to Jacob, not Esau, in freedom.
Indeed, if He had wanted to, God would be free and just to let that rebellious people be destroyed by Pharaoh at the Red Sea. We read in Psalm 106:7, "Our fathers understood not thy wonders in Egypt; they remembered not the multitude of thy mercies; but provoked him at the sea, even at the Red Sea."
Holy name. But the, verse 8 continues, "Nevertheless he saved them for his name’s sake, that he might make his mighty power to be known."
God’s choice to rescue Israel at the Red Sea and make them into a people to bear His name was free and merciful and gracious! It was simply an extension and partial fulfillment of that first free oath that God made to Abraham and Isaac and Jacob.
Actually, His truth is echoed over and over again elsewhere in the Bible. For example, we read in Isaiah 43, "Even every one that is called by my name for I have created him for my glory, I have formed him; yeah, I have made him" (v. 7), and "This people I formed for myself; they shall shew forth my praise" (v. 21).
The New Testament explanation
With the coming of Christ, God began to reveal that while god continues to rejoice in election, national Israel is really not the people that is the focus of His dealings. He is more concerned with spiritual Israel, or the Israel of God. God does not elect and save a whole political nation on earth; His salvation program applies to the elect of God that comprises redeemed people from all over the world. We read in Romans 2:28, 29:
For he is not a Jew, which is one outwardly; neither is that circumcision, which is outward in the flesh: But he is a Jew, which is one inwardly; and circumcision is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter; whose praise is not of men, but of God.
Since we are talking about God’s pleasure or joy in election, let’s turn now to Luke 10. The seventy disciples have just returned from their preaching tours and reported their success to Jesus. We then read in verse 21:
In that hour Jesus rejoiced in spirit, and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes: even so, Father; for so it seemed good in thy sight.
The whole Trinity. Notice that all three members of the Trinity are rejoicing here: Jesus is rejoicing, but it says that He is rejoicing in the Holy Spirit, making it clear that the Holy Spirit shares in the joy as well. We learn about the pleasure of God the Father at the end of the verse.
What is it that has the Trinity rejoicing together in this place? It is the free electing love of God to hide things from the intellectual elite and to reveal them to babes. And what is it that the Father has hidden from some and has revealed to others? Verse 22 answers: "All things are delivered to me of my Father: and no man knoweth who the Son is, but the Father; and who the Father is, but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal him."
In other words, when the seventy disciples return from their evangelistic mission and give their report to Jesus, He and the Holy Spirit rejoice that God the Father has chosen, according to His own good pleasure, the ones whose eyes He would open to the spiritual reality of His Son. They are glad that God has taken the initiative to choose a people for Himself, and that it depends ultimately on the good pleasure of God.
Humbling the wise. The Son and the Holy Spirit are so bent on exalting God the Father that they rejoice when He exerts His power and grace to choose a people for Himself in a way that will confound all the man-centered expectations of the world. The wise are passed over in their pride and the babes, the unlikely, the helpless are surprised with divine favor. The tables are turned from what the world expects. The wisdom of man is put down. And the freedom of God’s grace is exalted.
This is exactly the focus of I Corinthians 1:26-31, which the Holy Spirit moved Paul to write:
For ye see your calling, brethren, how that no many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called: But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise; and God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty; And base things of the world, and things which are despised, hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not, to bring to nought things that are: That no flesh should glory in his presence. But of him are ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made unto us wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption: That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord.
The thought here is similar to that in Luke 10:21. God freely chooses and saves whomever He pleases for two reasons: (1) So that no human being might boast in the presence of God; God wants to eliminate all human pride, all self-reliance, all boasting in man. (2) So that the full credit for salvation is given absolutely to God and God alone. "He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord." Put another way: Humble man and exalt Christ; make man see his utter dependence on God’s mercy and magnify the glory of free grace.
Closing. So note this well! Those of you who know that you are sinners and ungodly and weak and helpless to save yourselves and yet have seen in Jesus an all-sufficient Savior, and by the grace of God have been drawn to case your life on Him and hope in Him and follow Him, count the electing grace of God as the most precious act of love in all the universe.
Then, you can confidently say as the Apostle Paul does in Romans 8:33, "Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? It is God that justifieth," and in verse 35, "Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?"
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Romans 9:11-24
Our Eschatology may vary even our Ecclesiology may be disputed among us but our Soteriology most assume a singularity and exclusivity which in biblical term is known as Quote; "The Narrow Way" and Quote!
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