God's chosen people

[Vic2]

If God loves all people, why did He choose only some to be His chosen people? What eternally happened to the people who were not His chosen people?

 

[Verbum]

Hi Vic,

The Jews were called God’s chosen people, because he chose them to bring forth the Messiah, Jesus, God-Man. Now that Jesus has died for all of us, we too are God’s chosen people, when we have the baptism of water or the baptism of desire.

Verbum

 

[mdcpensive1]

Dear Vic2,
The Jews being the chosen people baffles many people into thinking that they are loved more by God than others. What is little understood is the fact that in the OT, the eldest son had the title of “first-born”. The first-born was important because not only did he receive a double portion of the blessing, but he had the added responsibility of being the good example in the family and leading others in family by his character and faith. It is similar for the nation of Jews. They are Christ’s eldest son and was to be the example of how all the nations learned about Yahweh. Nations could learn of the faith by seeing the Jews live it. They could learn how Yahweh would blesses a faithful nation and they would come to an understanding of faith in Him. The Jews had much responsibility in keeping the Old Covenant of which many times they failed. However, that does not mean that they lost the status of our eldest son in the ways of Yahweh.
St. Paul talks about a hidden plan of God. The plan is how the gentiles are to be grafted onto the vine of the Jews so we can become his first-born children also which is His Church.
Mdcpensive1

 

[BlestOne]

As other posters have stated, God chose the Jews to bring forth the Messiah. After Christ came into his ministry, the covenants were extended to cover all believers as God’s adopted children, the “brethern” of Christ. The apostles were commanded by Jesus to extend this invitation to the entire world, that all would be received into God’s family. Using familial terms such as sons and daughters, brothers, etc. we are reminded that God calls all of us to belong to him. We are not slaves or servants, we are children of the Father, our big brother is Christ himself. This is so signifigant, we are still discovering the fullness of what this means. We know that everything we know about God of the OT and Christ of the NT and everything that is written about the kingdom of heaven is expressed to us in terms of family. We are treasured and loved by our Lord as his child!

 

[rwoehmke]

As other posters have stated, God chose the Jews to bring forth the Messiah.

The Jews were chosen and made a people with a history that would make sense of who Jesus was. The prophecy and typology in the OT made it possible to show others just who Jesus was and why he came as we see fulfilled in the NT. Some refer to the whole of the two Testaments as “Salvation History.”

 

[Rand_Al_Thor]

Pax vobiscum!

You know, we were just discussing this very question yesterday at my Newman Club’s Bible study. We are doing John’s Gospel, and were discussing the passage from the beginning of chapter 4 where Jesus talks to the Samaritan woman at the well. When we talked about the verse, “For salvation is from the Jews”, my campus minister asked us, “So why did God choose the Jews, out of all the people in the world, to be his chosen people?” We talked about it for a while, and my campus minister explained that the reason was because God needed a people through whom to begin to reveal himself. Abraham showed God that he had faith, and so God chose Abraham’s descendents to be those people. So that is what the verse “all salvation is from the Jews” means, that it was through the Jews that the message of salvation came into the world.

In Christ,
Rand

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

Big question​

1. God’s preferential love in virtue of which He elects A (rather than B), or Y rather than Z, is a constant feature of the presentation of God in the Bible.

• He chose Abram, & called Abram, to leave Ur
• He chose Moses to lead His people - not Aaron
• He chose David to be king over Israel - not one of his brothers
• “You have not chosen Me - I have chosen you”

• and so on. It appears often in both Testaments, & is not an outworn relic of ideas about God which Christians need to outgrow, but a feature of the activity of Jesus: “like Father, like Son”. To see one, is to see the other.

God became incarnate as the man Jesus of Nazareth, in a backward province of the Roman Empire, “under Pontius Pilate” & his predecessors. Why not somewhere more central or famous, like Athens or Rome ? Why not become incarnate as Socrates or Caesar ? Why then, there, in that culture, in those social circumstances ?

Why did God’s Providence choose what became man to survive the extinction of the dinosaurs - why were the dinosaurs not chosen, so they could develop into something which “in the fullness of time” would be man, or some similar being ?

Why is it that God Willed that the development of Israelite religion should be recorded in the writings that make up the Bible; why that religion, & those writings ? It is not lack of power that stopped God from working in Buddhism to reveal Himself in Buddhism rather than in Judaism.

There are several clues to at least the outlines of an answer.

1. None of what happened, had to happen - the Bible is a thoroughly Jewish set of writings, but it did not have to be Jewish: God could perfectly well have inspired Plato, or Confucius, or the Buddha. In actual fact, this is not what happened - He created & chose Israel, not the Athenians, Chinese, or the peoples of India.

[continue…]

 

[Gottle_of_Geer]

…continued & ended]

1. The fact that Israel was chosen as God’s “son”, “people”, “bride”, owed absolutely nothing to Israel; the Israelites were not chosen because they were godly - the Tanakh shows they were rebellious, forgetful of God, & not one iota better than they should have been. Their election by God is based on what God is & does, never because they are good. Any good in them, is from God in the first place. And all this is equally true of us. If faith in Christ were based on human virtue, none of us would be Christian - there is no virtue in anyone, which is not wholly God’s gift.

So to be God’s chosen, is never, a reason for a superiority complex, still less for exterminating or enslaving or despising the “unchosen”. It is a position of privilege - therefore, of responsibility; & it exposes the chosen to a severer judgement than comes to the unchosen, because the greater the grace received, the greater the guilt if it is abused. It took the Jews a very long time to get this into their heads; ditto us:

Amo 3:1 Hear this word that the LORD has spoken against you, O people of Israel, against the whole family which I brought up out of the land of Egypt:
Amo 3:2 "You only have I known of all the families of the earth; therefore I will punish you for all your iniquities.
1Pe 4:16 yet if one suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but under that name let him glorify God.
1Pe 4:17 For the time has come for judgment to begin with the household of God; and if it begins with us, what will be the end of those who do not obey the gospel of God?

There is a paradox here - Jesus is supremely loved by the Father: therefore, He was called upon to suffer supremely. Because He is His Father’s “Son, His Beloved, on Whom His favour rests”, the Father “handed over” His Son to the “death of the Cross”. Because He really is the Messiah, He was treated like an accursed thing.

1. Rationally, that makes no sense; it is not what one would expect. It is “not fair”, it is “unjust” - IOW, it is a skandalon, a “stumbling block”. Which is what St.Paul says a Crucified Messiah is. Especially as much of the Tanakh sees misfortune as a sign of God’s displeasure against sinners; so for a Crucified Messiah to be God’s “Chosen”, is senseless, & “unBiblical”. Grace is something deeper than fairness - God created because He is gracious, not because the (non-existent) creation had any rights which God was in fairness obliged to acknowledge. Precisely because God has no obligations, but is their Creator, to act out of infinite Divine freedom & graciousness is more revealing of God than His acting out of obligation.
2. If God’s choice is based on grace, as St.Paul insists, then this paradox makes sense. After it has happened - not before; it makes sense only in retrospect, it can’t be anticipated. As it based on grace, it shows that God is a God of grace; & because it is based on grace, all possible reasons for human self-exaltation are abolished. Grace is always present in election.
3. God’s preferential Love is supremely free & non-necessitated - it is not “arbitrary”. Still less is it tyrannical; but it is beyond our power to manipulate; God is “not a tame lion”.
4. Election is not confined to the Bible - it is a feature of life outside the Bible, before & since; it is not purely “religious”, but can be seen throughout creation & history. It therefore tells us something about God’s Providence. If anything, the theological doctrine is a special example of a universal pattern.
5. Why does God choose ? For the glory of His Name; & in the NT, this means that “all things” are for the sake of Christ. Election is in Christ, & for Christ, & from Christ, & is His work. Far from being arbitrary, it shows forth the excellence of Christ. He is Israel personified - all that was promised to Israel, is fulfilled in Him ##