No I’m not blogging about politics. One of more controversial doctrines held by many Christians is election, which is essentially that God in his sovereignty would chose some to become his children. It would be fair to say many embrace this belief, while others run far away from it.
I’ve been reading The Gospel in a Pluralist Society by Lesslie Newbigin the past few weeks. I really appreciated how he tackled this subject of election and how it should cause us to live and it is easily one of the best and most challenging things I’ve read in months:
“To be elect in Christ Jesus, and there is no other election, means to be incorporated into his mission to the world, to be the bearer of God’s saving purpose for his whole world, to be the sign and the agent and the firstfruit of his blessed kingdom which is for all.
It means therefore, as the New Testament makes abundantly clear, to take our share in his suffering, to bear the scars of the passion. It means, as Paul says elsewhere, to bear in the body the dying of Jesus so that the life of the risen Jesus may be manifest and made available for others.
It means that this particular body of people who bear the name of Jesus through history, this strange and often absurd company of people so feeble, so foolish, so often fatally compromised with the world, this body with all its contingency and particularity, is the body which has the responsibility of bearing the secret of God’s reign through world history.
It is the calling of the Church to bear through history to its end the secret of the lordship of the crucified.”
“Bearer of God’s saving purpose for his whole world”
Now that’s an election, whether we agree with the doctrine of it or not, we can all embrace!
