Do We Choose God or Does He Choose Us? Part 1 (TMF:1780)

Friday, February 04, 2022
Peace to Live By: Do We Choose God or Does He Choose Us? Part 1 (TMF:1780) - Daniel Litton
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       We want to imagine that we choose God, and that our relationship with God is by our deciding. But, bring to mind what Jesus has told us. John 15:16: “You did not choose me, but I chose You and appointed You that You should go and bear fruit and that Your fruit should abide” (ESV). Oh, I thought I choose God. Nope, God chooses us first. Jesus didn’t say in John, “You chose me, but I also chose you.” He doesn’t say that. He said, “You did not choose me.” This is hard for us to understand, especially in the United States. Freedom has been so ingrained into our thinking that we believe that we choose everything, and that we have rights to respond and rights not to respond to anything. However, here, in this verse, Paul kind of collapses that idea for us, and he will chip away at it still more in the next chapter.