Sons of Abraham from All Eternity

It is well known and often pointed out that Luke 19:10 states the great theme (or at least one of the great themes) of Luke's account of the gospel of the kingdom. "The Son of Man came to seek and to save the lost." That's a dominant element, if not the dominant element, in Luke's message.

Just before this verse there is a peculiar and striking word from Jesus about Zacchaeus' salvation. Zacchaeus repents of his sin (Lk. 19:8) and manifests that repentance with "fruits in keeping with repentance" (Lk. 3:8). Then Jesus says, "Today salvation has come to this house, since he also is a son of Abraham" (19:9).

Now take careful notice of the order. The dependent clause beginning with "since" gives the reason salvation comes to Zacchaeus' house. To say what it is not saying, in order to see what it is saying, Zacchaeus does not become a son of Abraham because salvation comes to his house. No. It's the other way around. Salvation comes to Zacchaeus' house because he is a son of Abraham. His being a son of Abraham is why Jesus came to seek and save him.

So it's clearer now why Jesus says in v. 5 that he "must stay at [Zacchaeus'] house today." He had to stay at his house because it was the next stop in seeking and saving the lost—the lost sheep of the house of Israel.

So we better take this to heart, and let it deeply move and affect us inwardly right the way to the bottom of our beings. Jesus seeks and saves, and salvation comes to us not because of anything we've done—but because we're chosen from all eternity as sons of Abraham.

Incidentally, note well the tension between 19:9 and 3:8, and engage in doing theology to figure out what this must imply. It seems it must mean one of two things. Either this man was a Jew, and so there is an "Israel within Israel" (cf. Rom. 9:6). Or, if Zacchaeus was a Gentile, then there are true Jews who are Jews, not according to the flesh, but according to the Spirit, that is, who are circumcised in heart (Rom. 2:28-29; cf. 9:8; Phil. 3:3).

O Heavenly Father, I Know I Will Remain with You Forever

Luther:

O heavenly Father, God and Father of my Lord Jesus Christ and God of all comfort, I thank you for revealing to me your dear Son, Jesus Christ, whom I believe. Him I have known and preached. Him I have loved and praised. Him heretics and all godless people do blaspheme and persecute. I pray, Lord Jesus, let my soul please you. O heavenly Father, although I must be separated from this body, I know I will remain with you forever. No one can pluck me from you hands. Amen.

—Martin Luther, Luther's Prayers (ed. Herbert F. Brokering; Augsberg: Minneapolis, 1994), 103.

Do You Know Who You Are?

Do you know who you are? I'm talking to you, Christians. I mean, do you really understand who you are in God's Son? Consider the address of the saints of Colossae in Colossians 3, addressed by Saint Paul in his ancient letter to them. 

Verse 12 of Colossians 3 addresses you—my brothers and sisters in Jesus—as “God’s chosen ones,” or it could be translated, “the elect of God.” This description—don't miss it!—is so precious. Israel of old was God’s elect. And as Israel of old was called sovereignly and freely, so also “you were called.” See verse 15: “you were called in one body.” You were summoned to be joined to Jesus, to belong to Jesus’ body. And, the “elect of God” are also described as “holy” and “loved.” You are “holy” and “loved.”

To understand the power and preciousness of these “oppulent appellations,”[1] consider the love language of Deut. 7:6-8. (By the way, I’ll just say parenthetically: this ought to be your “love language,” our love language.)  In Deuteronomy 7:6-8, these three concepts of election, holiness, and being loved come together so beautifully. 

For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the LORD set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but it is because the LORD loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers, that the LORD has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.

To be holy, as perhaps you know, is to be set apart for God’s special use and purposes. And this holiness is the result (note this well), not the cause, of God’s election. God’s choosing of a people calls them to be holy, set apart with a special status, to be used for God’s good and glorious purposes.

Now although God’s election makes a people holy, it is not election that makes God’s people loved. God’s love is what moved him to elect a people. His love elects, his love chooses.

Two texts on this love. Jeremiah 31:3 says, “I have loved you with an everlasting love.” Before you were created, God loved you, he set his affection on you. And Ephesians 1:4-5: “In love he predestined us . . . through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will. . . .” So his love moved him to predestine, to elect. You are elect, because you were loved, but you were not loved and elected because you were holy, but God’s love and election made you holy. For as Colossians 2:13-14 tells us: “When you were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, [it was then that] God made you alive together with Christ, having forgiven us all our trespasses, having wiped out that record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands.” He put it away, “nailing it to the cross.” Loved. Elected. Forgiven. Made holy.

And so with these descriptions—chosen, holy, and loved—it’s clear: the Church is being understood as the new Israel in the second Adam, as a new humanity in Jesus. Doug Moo says this:

The Christians in Colossae . . . have the privilege of belonging to the historical people of God. The ‘new self’ is the ‘new Israel.’ This identification is clearly indicated in the description of the Colossians as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved. All three are standard ways of describing Israel in the Old Testament and the church as the people of God in the New Testament.[2]

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[1] Kent Hughes, Colossians and Philemon: The Supremacy of Christ (Wheaton: Crossway, 1989), 101.

[2] Douglas J. Moo, The Letters to the Colossians and to Philemon (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2008), 275.

The Particular Selective Love of God

From Jonathan Edwards' sermon on 1 Pet. 2:9-10, Christians are a Chosen Generation, a Royal Priesthood, a Holy Nation, a Peculiar People:

The electing love of God is singly of every particular person. Some deny a particular election, and say that there is no other election than a general determination, that all that believe and obey shall be saved. Some also own no more than an absolute election of nations. But God did from all eternity singly and distinctly choose, and set his love upon, every particular person that ever believes, as is evident from Gal. 2:20: 'Who loved me and gave himself for me' (Works, vol. 2, Hickman ed., 938).

You'll perhaps notice that Edwards addresses here the same Arminian arguments thrown up today, which still blow away like chaff before the mighty rushing wind of the Word of God.