Why did God choose me?

What, it may be asked, is the motive of such love as has been made known to us? There can be but one answer to the question—Love! It found its motive in itself. He loved because He loved. This is indicated in the words of Deuteronomy 7:7, “The Lord did not set His love upon you nor choose you” for any merit or greatness beyond others, “but because the Lord loved you.” God is love, and His love has been set upon us in Christ Jesus, and nothing can separate us from it. Not only was there no merit or worthiness in us to call out His love, but we were lost sinners. Yet He loved us because He loved us. His love found its motive in itself, and when He has us around Him in the home prepared, then His love shall be satisfied.

All is the fruit entirely of the sovereign grace of God. We shall never be robbed of this rich blessing in time or eternity. The Father chose us in Christ before time had commenced, and has marked us out for sonship, not for anything which He saw as meritorious in us but absolutely according to the good pleasure of His will. His intention in so doing was that we might be before Him holy, and without blame in love. This is what Christ ever was, and is, and we shall be just like Him.

Hence the apostle contrasts the call of God with works, rather than our faith, so as to cut off the poor semi-Pelagianism of such as Chrysostom of old or Tholuck of late, which would make election governed by the foreseen superiority of one to the other. Language cannot more precisely contradict this, the natural thought (not of natural men only but) of reasoning or imaginative saints. Esau had done no ill to disqualify him, Jacob no good to qualify him; but, before either of the twins was born, God in the exercise of His sovereign will chose that the greater should do service to the lesser. Such was His purpose. Their works had nothing to do with the matter and are excluded, so as to rest all on the caller, God Himself.

This is a grave practical lesson, and Malachi, I think, is deeply interesting in this way. At the beginning of the history of Jacob and Esau we find the purpose of God before the children were born. Indeed to make election a question of the deserts in the two parties is simply to destroy its nature, if allowed in word. Election is necessarily from God entirely apart from those that are the objects of it, as it means the exercise of His sovereign choice. If there is the smallest ground in the party chosen because of which God chooses, it is not His choice, but rather a moral discernment, which, far from being sovereign, is only an appraisal whether the person deserves or not. One may hold then as strongly as the stoutest Calvinist the free sovereign choice of God, but the reprobation of the wicked which the Calvinist draws from it, as an equally sovereign decree, is in my judgment a grave error. I do not therefore scruple to say a word upon it now, inasmuch as it is an important thing in both doctrine and practice. The idea that, if God chooses one, He must reprobate another whom He does not choose, is a fallacy and without, yea against, scripture. This is exactly where human influence comes in; that is, the petty self-confidence of man's mind. Now I do not see why we as believers should be petty; there is every reason why we should gather what is great for God. To be simple is all well; but this too is a very different thing from being petty, and no reason why we should limit ourselves to ourselves; for what does God reveal His mind for? Surely that we should know Him, and be imitators of Him.

To my own mind then it is full of the deepest interest, that while God chose before the children were born, and decided what was to be the lot of the one relatively to the other, He never made any man to be a sinner. No doubt the children of Adam are conceived in sin and shapen in iniquity; mankind are born in that condition. Their whole being is lost in it. It is no question therefore of making man a sinner, because since the fall he departed from God and the race is evil without exception. Man belongs to a stock now wholly depraved — evil the sad and universal heirloom. God's election is entirely independent of what He finds, and spite of all evil. He elects angels no doubt that never fell: even so they had nothing to do with determining the rest who were not so kept. In every case it is simply a question of God's choice. But the fallen condition of man gives to God's election, where sinners are the only possible objects, an exceeding beauty and very deep moment. He chooses entirely apart from anything that deserves it, in the face of all that is out of harmony with Himself. It is not so where He judges and rejects.

Had the choice been left to us in the early years of their career, we should have probably selected Esau with practical unanimity. His surface characteristics would have appealed to us. Without a doubt the average unconverted person would choose Esau rather than Jacob at any time, during their lives or a thousand years after. But not so the child of God. He perceives with God that though marked by many a surface blemish there was that in Jacob, fruit of God's work, which was of God, and, therefore, lovely and to be loved. God's choice is "not of works," i.e., of man's works, but "of Him that calls," i.e., of His own work. God's election and God's work go hand in hand. Why they go in any particular direction and not in another is a question utterly beyond our creature minds; nor should we be capable of understanding God's reasons, if He condescended to tell us, — so we verily believe.

But there is one thing of which we may be sure: God's choice is always "the election of GRACE" (Rom. 11:5). That God elects to judgment is an idea reached as the fruit of human reasonings upon this matter, which so completely transcends our reason; it is never so stated in Scripture. The Scriptural presentation of the case is that all are totally ruined with no point of recovery in themselves, and that God chooses to have mercy on some and, consequently, in them to work with life-giving power.

This sovereign, gratuitous work in man, done in accordance with that eternal counsel which all things work out, defines clearly for us what is election. It means the gracious interference of divine love in behalf of those who, no different from others, dead in the same sins, instead of being given up to perish, are given to Christ to be the fruit of His blessed work, "that He might be the first-born among many brethren." It is love, and only love, righteously and in perfect goodness manifested in salvation only, and of those worthy of damnation. To charge upon it the damnation of the lost is blasphemy, however unconscious, of that in which the whole heart of God is pouring itself out. If others remain obdurate in pride and careless unbelief, and going on to destruction, while we, justified by faith, and having peace with God, rejoice in hope of the glory of God, is it because we are better than they? What Christian heart can believe this? No; it is because "God, who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ." No man has found his true level who has not come down there, and only there do we find the full and impregnable assurance of perfect and enduring peace. "Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect?" A love that found us with nothing, to indue us with all, is a love that has in it no element of change.

Most assuredly. In 1 Peter 1:2 we read, "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father." Election, then, is distinct from foreknowledge, though based upon it. God's election or choice is not a blind, fatalistic casting of the lot. That is a purely heathen conception. There is some such legend in connection with Buddha. When men were created it is said that he cast a lot saying, "These to heaven, and I care not; these to hell and I care not." But our God and Father does not act like this. He chooses in the full light of His foreknowledge. Hence no sinner, who ever really wants to be saved, finds the door shut against him because he is not one of the elect. His very desire is the fruit of the Spirit's work. And God's choice, as in the case of Esau and Jacob, is always justified by results. (Compare Rom. 9:12-13 with Mal. 1:2-3).

In verse 5 we are marked out for adoption, according to the good pleasure of His will. What wonderful grace is this that brings us into the nearest possible relationship with God Himself, into sonship. This portion for us belongs to God's eternal counsels, which existed before we had any being; long before sin had entered into the world. It was not to unravel the dreadful confusion which sin introduced that God planned this blessing for us; it was no after-thought with God; He marked us out for this most wonderful relationship to give Himself pleasure, and that the glorious nature of His grace might be praised in what He has done. God desired to gratify His own heart; and to do so He has brought us into the place where we can he eternally happy before Him, in the knowledge of His thoughts and in the enjoyment of His love. This place is not of our choosing; left to ourselves we would have got as far from God as possible: but God has brought us as near as is possible: into association with His own Son, before His face. Such thoughts are too high for man; God alone could have conceived them.

Moses said to Israel, “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; but because the Lord loved you” (Deut. 7:7-8). He could furnish no reason save what God was in Himself. This is a great comfort, for it puts the love of God on a basis that can never break down.

The answer is that God made choice of them in His sovereign wisdom. We read in Deuteronomy 7-8, that the Lord did not choose them because they were more in number than any other, for in fact, they were the fewest. No, the only reason that God could give for His choice was that He loved them. There was nothing in them to draw out His love in contrast with others: the reason lay in His own nature, and herein lies the solid foundation of the blessing into which the Lord brings His people.