AN ELECTION TO MAKE YOU THANKFUL!

The election is finally over.  That was a rough one, wasn’t it?  Opinions were dramatically counter to one another, feelings ran high, and frustrations with both candidates boiled over.  I’ve been through presidential elections a bunch of times already in my life and I don’t remember one quite like this one.  One of the ubiquitous frustrations was that neither candidate was first choice.  It seemed that a large number of people in the electorate would rather not elect either one of the candidates.  Did you hear that opinion over the past year and half?  Was it your opinion? 

It was a happy accident that the second Scripture reading assigned to be read in many of our worship services Sunday was 2 Thessalonians 2:13-17:  “But we ought always to thank God for you, brothers loved by the Lord, because from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth. {14} He called you to this through our gospel, that you might share in the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

I needed to be reminded that even in the midst of all the political angst around me, there was something and someone for which to be thankful.  I am thankful for my fellow Christians.  They remain light in a world that got pretty dark – and still is in so many ways.  They are salt that seasons the world with a message of forgiveness, hope, and eternal blessings in Christ even as we live in a world too full of violence, hatred, lawlessness, despair, and a very unhealthy fixation on all things “me” and “here and now.”  I am thankful for my fellow followers of Jesus.

But I am also thankful for an extraordinary teaching of the Christian faith that sits in the middle of those verses from 2 Thessalonians.  They are words that talk about God’s choice, God’s election.*  Did you catch Paul’s totally unexpected description of the Christian in those verses? -  “from the beginning God chose you to be saved through the sanctifying work of the Spirit and through belief in the truth.”  Wait – what?  God chose you and me to be his own through faith in Christ?  Why on earth would he do that?  Did he see something in us that made us a better choice than someone else?  That can’t be it.  God’s Word is clear that we are all altogether disqualified:  (Romans 5:12)  “…just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned.”  All sinned.  There is no wiggle room, no exemption, nor gradations of wickedness or righteousness in those words.  God was left with the pool of humanity that all had fallen short.  Why choose any at all?

So why did he choose you and me to be believers?  Why did he choose you and me to hear the gospel?  Why did he choose you and me for heaven?  Check out what he says through Paul in 2 Timothy 1:9:  “[God] has saved us and called us to a holy life—not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time.”   He elected us because he wanted to.  He wanted to purely out of grace, that is, his undeserved and freely given love for us.  That election and that grace stretch back before the beginning of time, so of course it had nothing to do with you or I deserving it, earning it, being more qualified for it or less disqualified for it than someone else. 

There it is.  No truly deserving choices, but out of love he chose us and lavished on us his good news of righteousness and forgiveness and eternal life in Jesus’ finished work.  Through that message in Word and Sacrament, the Holy Spirit called us to faith.  All his doing there, too.

Donald Trump ought to be very thankful that he was chosen when there is so much about him that could have disqualified him.  And we can be thankful that God chose us when there was everything about us that disqualified us.  God did not have to do what he did when he chose us.  He was under no obligation to choose us, but he did.  That is grace.  That gives us hope.  That gives us every reason to stay staked to the Word all our lives, because it is through that Word that he made his choice a reality in my life and yours.  Be thankful for that election!  It has changed everything for the better!

 

*As you reflect on this teaching of Scripture, be careful to reign in your human logic that is inclined to reason its way from “God chose some to be saved through faith in Jesus” to “He must have chosen others to be lost.”  The Scriptures announce God’s election to believers to remind them that it is only by God’s grace that they are saved, and to remind them that they are not believers because of an accident of our birth or mere spiritual serendipity.  They are believers because that was God’s plan for them.  If you have questions or concerns about this, please feel free to contact me.   The Scriptures never teach that unbelievers are lost because God wanted them to be unbelievers and chose them to be lost.