God’s Elect: The Chosen Generation
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About this ebook
The biblical doctrines of election and predestination generate much passion and emotional intensity among Christians. Most theologians have determined that these are doctrines filled with mystery, tension, and paradox which will never be resolved.
Author John E. Chipman disagrees.
He provides a fresh, biblical viewpoint regarding the perplexing doctrine of election that has the potential to kindle a re-thinking of the way Christians view and talk about God's purpose of election in the New Testament. In God's Elect, Chipman presents a truth that is neither Calvinistic nor Arminian―a truth that is simply, well, biblical.
This book makes no claim to be deeply philosophical or scholarly. The arguments are intentionally simple, yet profoundly biblical.
If you feel like you are caught in an ever-darkening doctrinal bog of election and predestination, and sense that you have lost God somewhere along the way, then you will want to read God's Elect. In its pages, you will find a path that leads back to the sunlight, back to solid ground, and back to the true God of the Bible.
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God’s Elect - John E. Chipman
INTRODUCTION
The mysteries of election, predestination and the divine sovereignty... prying into them may make theologians but it will rarely make saints.
—A.W. Tozer
I believe in God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, the Lord of heaven and earth. I believe that Jesus took on flesh, lived on the earth, and died on a cross to make atonement for our sins so that those who live might live for Him. I believe that He was resurrected on the third day, ascended to heaven, and is at the right hand of the Father, making intercession to save those who draw near to God through Him. In other words, I am a Christian. And so are you, if you believe like I believe.
This means that we are the true children of God, the followers of Jesus Christ. We are justified by faith, loved by God, coheirs of the heavenly kingdom, and no longer slaves to sin. We’ve experienced the power of the Holy Spirit, tasted the goodness of the word of God, and have assurance of our eternal destinies. We’re free, forgiven, and blessed.
But I’m not one of the elect. And neither are you.
I know this might come as a bit of a shock to many of you, and I completely understand the emotional uproar such a statement might elicit. I too have felt my pulse quicken, my hands get clammy, and my world spin as the very foundation of my faith became unstable and my understanding of the nature of God was challenged by the implications of the doctrine of divine election.
A wise pastor once told me that wrestling with the concepts of election and predestination was a kind of rite of passage for all serious Christians. He went on to comment that, at some point, everyone must come to their own understanding of how to deal with the clear passages in Scripture that seem to say that a sovereign God chooses people to use for his purposes and to lavish his love and grace upon, while others are passed over
(a nicety for predestined for hell
).
This wise pastor was right. The biblical doctrine of election and predestination is the single most emotionally challenging theological concept in Scripture. While there are certainly other enigmatic doctrines (the Trinity and the hypostatic union come to mind), a person’s eternal destiny and spiritual well-being do not hinge on whether you understand how God is one-in-three persons (the Trinity), or in knowing how Jesus could be 100 percent God and 100 percent man (hypostatic union). But a doctrine which posits that a person’s eternal destiny depends on whether they have been chosen by God for salvation or not is worth understanding correctly. Warren Wiersbe, the well-known Bible commentator, tells of a seminary professor who once said to him, Try to explain the doctrine of election and you may lose your mind. But try to explain it away and you may lose your soul!
¹ Indeed, a doctrine in which both our standing in eternity and the very nature of the God we worship hang in the balance is a doctrine worth serious contemplation.
So, contemplate I did—just as scholars, theologians, and philosophers have done for more than two thousand years. For more than a decade I wrestled with some very personal implications of this biblical doctrine. Then one day, while reading the short and oft-overlooked letter written by the apostle John to the elect lady and her children
(2 John 1), a thought—more like an inspiration, a prompting—occurred to me that within this letter there is a suggestion of something really important, something that would help unlock a correct understanding of the doctrine of election as it relates the gospel of grace.
This book makes no claim to be deeply philosophical or scholarly. The arguments are intentionally simple, yet profoundly biblical. While I greatly respect the scholarship and the depth of research of many others who have tackled this subject, I wanted to present a few ideas that I have not seen explored in any of the mountains of research I’ve reviewed on the topic. It is my hope that you will recognize and benefit from some original biblical insights into the doctrine of election and predestination. In the end, the real purpose of this book is to share a journey that began with an all-too-common spiritual naiveté, passed through some dark and stormy doctrinal seas, and finally arrived at a beautiful sunlit meadow of clarity and peace and hope, a place where a faithful, loving, and just God reigns—the true God of the Bible.
Common Ground
I sincerely hope that this new perspective on a somewhat perplexing topic is encouraging to all Christians willing to let God’s word speak for itself. However, there are a few basics that we all must share to ensure that we’re starting from the same benchmark. Here are three things we must affirm:
Every Christian wants to get this right. Every serious disciple of Jesus wants to understand God, God’s plan, God’s purpose, and our purpose in God’s plan. We all want what God wants, but we acknowledge with humility that there will always be mysteries associated with God—and also acknowledge with humility that God himself is often inscrutable. We must accept the things he has declared yet has chosen not to reveal clearly; but we must also acknowledge, explore, and seek to understand without prejudice the things that he has made plain.
If the Bible says it, we believe it. We can understand much about God on the basis of his own self-disclosure in his creation, in his word as revealed to us in our Bibles, and in the person of Jesus Christ. While we must affirm the veracity of the Bible as the word of God, we must also acknowledge the interpretive nature of language. Having said that, it is important that we let the Bible speak for itself. We must resist manipulating the text. We must resist altering verb tenses, adding words, or redefining terms. We must let the Scriptures inform our theology, resisting the temptation to overlay a predetermined ideology or presupposed mindset onto them.
The Bible is accessible and noncontradictory. I thank you... that you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding and revealed them to little children; yes, Father, for such was your gracious will
(Matt. 11:25–26). The Bible was not written to conceal God’s truth but to reveal it. It was not intended to be so cryptic, shrouded, mysterious, or/and secretive that only the cleverest among us could interpret it. And the Bible does not contradict itself. If we encounter what seems to be a contradiction in the Scriptures, we must assume error on our part, not a contradiction on God’s part.
Test All Things
What’s presented here is not a traditional viewpoint. I encourage you to be skeptical and discerning. In an ages-old religion, nontraditional
is always suspect, and rightfully so. I fully expect this fresh look at the doctrine of election to be challenged by many in certain theological circles—because what I see so clearly in the Scriptures is a departure from much of the traditional thinking on this subject, and because change will always be a bit uncomfortable for many. But, as George Bernard Shaw once said, All great truths begin as blasphemies.
I believe that the truth regarding election is not Calvinistic, nor is it Arminian. The truth is simply, well, biblical.
I’ve included a chapter I’ve called Yeah, But What About...?
In these pages I have tried to anticipate the arguments, concerns, and objections from Calvinists, Arminians, traditionalists, and everyone in between, by looking at some popular sections of Scripture commonly debated in the discourse on the topic of election. While my brief exegesis of these passages is not intended to be comprehensive, the testing and validation of this understanding of election was an important part of the process of coming to terms with this puzzling doctrine. I wanted to ensure that my interpretation of God’s divine plan of election could be biblically defended and would stand up to the scrutiny of ardent critics. It does.
I’ve also included a chapter called Reverberations,
in which I explore the ramifications of this new perspective on the doctrine of election and predestination with regard to other commonly held biblical doctrines. I realized that the acceptance of the view proposed here will necessarily require a reexamination of some traditional thinking regarding some commonly held soteriological (salvational) passages and will shed some new light on the much-debated doctrines of eternal security and total depravity. You will find these thoughts in Chapter Seven.
Encouragement
If you have struggled with this doctrine as I have, have found much of the scholarly debate on the topic to be frustratingly confusing and overly (and conspicuously) highbrow
to the point of near incomprehensibility, and been vexed by the theologians who twist and turn the words of Scripture until familiar biblical passages are barely recognizable, then I hope this noncontradictory, true-to-Scripture understanding of the doctrine of election helps bridge the ages-old disconnect that has divided well-meaning, truth-seeking Christians for centuries.
If you feel like you’re caught in an ever-darkening doctrinal bog of election and predestination, and feel like you’ve lost God somewhere along the way—the God you knew as a child, the God who is gracious and merciful, patient and loving—I hope this effort helps you find your way back to the sunlight, back to solid ground, back to the true God of the Bible.
1
WHAT HAPPENED TO GOD?
The secret things belong to the Lord our God, but the things that are revealed belong to us and to our children forever, that we may do all the words of this law. (Deuteronomy 29:29)
Whenever I encounter a passage of Scripture that I find confusing, cryptic, or incongruous, I mark it with a boxed X in the margin of my Bible. For the time being, I tuck it away in my junk drawer
—a mental storage place where I put things that I don’t know what to do with. But they don’t go away. Every time I open my Bible, there they are. Like the junk drawer in my house, every time I open the drawer all the junk
is still there, and I still don’t know what to do with it.
For many years, my Bible junk drawer
has been filled with things that many theologians refer to as tensions,
mysteries,
or paradoxes
—all polite terms to avoid the word contradictions,
because all would agree that the Bible does not—indeed, cannot—contradict itself. I’m convinced