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God's choices of Jacob, Abraham, Moses, prophets — not favoritism but purposive grace for non-salvific roles

20 Questions with Pastor Mike (Episode 9) 00:39:55 – 00:42:26

Question from Ryder Ness, a "struggling Calvinist," about divine favoritism in biblical election.

Mike distinguishes between God choosing people for salvation and choosing people for specific roles. Jacob was chosen over Esau to carry the nation of Israel, not to be the only saved person. Abraham was chosen to birth the nation, Moses to lead it, prophets to speak God's word. These are functional/vocational choices. Consistently, those chosen are not chosen for their worth or works (Jacob is a schemer, Moses has a stutter, Jeremiah is young, Isaiah has unclean lips) — they are chosen by grace alone. This illustrates, without equaling, the nature of salvific grace. Mike does not accuse God of favoritism or injustice — he says doing so reflects massive human pride.

Responses

Scripture Commentary article

Calvinism — Research Notes (Cheryl Schatz)

Collection of 5 research notes on Calvinism, covering God's mercy to all (Romans 11:30-32), the purpose of divine mercy and compassion, Esau's election as about Messianic lineage not individual salvation (Malachi 1:2-3), and Calvin's concept of Evanescent Grace.

Scripture Commentary article

The Giving Part 2: Judas the Betrayer, a Balanced View of the Sovereignty of God

[Music] the giving is a balanced view of the sovereignty of God God's sovereignty is vitally important for us to know God yet it's God's sovereignty taught as a system of theological thought which can lead to a person reading into the biblical text an outside concept that is foreign to the writers i...

Scripture Commentary article

Judas the Betrayer and the death of Jesus

We have just released part 2 of our video project on the Sovereignty of God. And we have released this part of the project for free! Why? Because I felt that the message was so important that I didn’t want any hindrance I wanted to get as wide a viewing as possible.

Scripture Commentary article

Did God hang babies out to dry with the rest of sinning humanity?

My last post on Judas brought up a discussion of Jesus’ words about Judas and what it would have been like for him had he not been born.

Scripture Commentary article

Masculine Christianity

This is part 2 of What God intended at creation and it is inspired by a recent lecture given by John Piper where he states that God’s intention for Christianity is for it to have a “ masculine feel “. After discussing John Piper’s Masculine Christianity, I will give my critique of his masculine argu

Scripture Commentary article

Laying A False Argument To Rest

One of the arguments that complementarians employ against women in ministry is the argument that God only used women as prophets and leaders in the Bible when there were no men available at the time. Is this really a valid argument

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