When and why did God choose those who would be saved? Are some not chosen?
In part 18 of our 34-part theology series, we learn about
God’s work of election, that is, his decision to choose those people who would
be saved before the foundation of the world. This act of election is, not
strictly speaking, part of the application of salvation to us, since it came
before Christ earned our salvation when he died on the cross.
In our series, we treat election at this point because it is
chronologically the beginning of God’s dealing with us in a gracious way.
Therefore, it is rightly thought of as the first step in the process of God’s
bringing salvation to us individually.
This Doctrine of Election is the subject of lesson 18 of my
34 lessons in systematic theology. Anyone who reads the Bible on a regular
basis has begun to develop a “theology” of who God is and what he has revealed
of Himself to man down through history. But is it organized to the point where
you can confidently say “this is what the Bible teaches” on a particular topic,
or do you just base your beliefs on random verses that could well be
misunderstood because they are taken out of context?
My confidence in going out to share the Gospel with
strangers comes largely from my study of “Systematic Theology”, which I’ll
define as learning what the whole Bible teaches us about a given topic. I’m
confident that I’m not misrepresenting God as revealed in his Word, and I’m
confident when people make unbiblical claims about God that challenge my own
beliefs. I’m increasingly amazed by the consistency of the Bible, written by so
many human authors but without contradiction, that I can only conclude it was
written by divine inspiration.
I’ve gained so much personally from my systematic study of
theology that I’m teaching a 34-week class on it at church, based on Dr. Wayne
Grudem’s books “Systematic Theology” and “Bible Theology”. I’m excited to dig
deeper personally as I prepare the outlines and lessons, and I want to take as
many people along with me on this journey as possible. So I am recording the
class and posting the videos to my YouTube channel, and making downloadable PDF
chapter outlines and audio recordings available on a Google Drive folder as
well.
Care to join me? Links to my YouTube channel and shared
resources are as follows:
Lesson 18 - https://youtu.be/205HbhbFxcw
Video: YouTube.com/c/JeffReiman
Shared Resources folder: https://tinyurl.com/yxy2kb56
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