3. The Election of Perfect Fittedness to God
Missionary Predestinations
Isaiah 49:1-2
This passage refers to the whole nation of Israel, to Our Lord Jesus Christ, and to every individual saint.
1. The Election of Perfect Fitness for God
God created the people known as Israel for one purpose, to be the servant of Jehovah until through them every nation came to know Who Jehovah was. The nation created for the service of Jehovah failed to fulfil God’s predestination for it; then God called out a remnant, and the remnant failed; then out of the remnant came One Who succeeded, the One Whom we know as the Lord Jesus Christ. The Saviour of the world came of this nation. He is called “the Servant of God” because He expresses exactly the creative purpose of God for the historic people of God. Through that one Man the purpose of God for the individual, for the chosen nation, and for the whole world, is to be fulfilled. It is through Him that we are made “a royal priesthood.”
When this election to God in Christ Jesus is realised by us individually, God begins to destroy our prejudices and our parochial notions and to turn us into the servants of His own purpose. The experience of salvation in individual lives means the incoming of this realisation of the election of God. When we are born from above (rv mg), we understand what is incomprehensible to human reason, viz., that the predestinations of God and our infinitesimal lives are made one and the same by Him. From the standpoint of rationalism, that is nonsense; but it is revelation fact. The connection between the election of God and human free will is confusing to our Gentile type of mind, but the connection was an essential element underlying all Hebrew thought. The predestinations of God cannot be experienced by individuals of their own free choice; but when we are born again, the fact that we do choose what has been predestined of God comes to us as a revelation. The rationalist says it is absurd to imagine that the purposes of Almighty God are furthered by an individual life, but it is true. God’s predestinations are the voluntary choosing of the sanctified soul. One way in which the realisation works out with us personally is when we say—“The Lord led me here.” The detailed guidance of God is a literal truth in the individual lives of saints. Our relation to the election of God is the one thing to be concerned over; consequently the need can never be the call. The call is of God, and the engineering of our circumstances is of God, never on the ground of our usefulness. The call of God relates us to the purpose of God.
The Purpose of the Missionary’s Creation
He hath made me. . . . (rv)
The first thing God does with us after sanctification is to “force through the channels of a single heart” the interests of the whole world by introducing into us the nature of the Holy Ghost. The nature of the Holy Ghost is the nature of the Son of God; the nature of the Son of God is the nature of Almighty God, and the nature of Almighty God is focused in John 3:16. When we are born from above (rv mg) the realisation dawns that we are built for God, not for ourselves, “He hath made me.” We are brought, by means of new birth, into the individual realisation of God’s great purpose for the human race, and all our small, miserable, parochial notions disappear.
If we have been living much in the presence of God, the first thing that strikes us is the smallness of the lives of men and women who do not recognise God. It did not occur to us before, their lives seemed to be broad and generous; but now there seems such a fuss of interests that have nothing whatever to do with God’s purpose, and are altogether unrelated to the election of God. It is because people live in the things they possess instead of in their relationship to God, that God at times seems to be cruel. There are a thousand and one interests that God’s providential hand has to brush aside as hopelessly irrelevant to His purpose, and if we have been living in those interests, we go with them (cf. Luke 12:15).
“The Lord hath called me from the womb.” In this rugged phrase Isaiah declares the creative purpose of God for Israel and Judah. Creation has the opposite meaning to selection. The essential pride of Israel and Judah (and of the Pharisees in Our Lord’s day) was that God was obliged to select them because of their superiority to other nations. God did not select them: God created them for one purpose, to be His bondslaves.
There were no nations until after the flood. After the flood the human race was split up into nations, and God called off one stream of the human race in Abraham, and created a nation out of that one man (see Genesis 12:2, et seq ). The Old Testament is not a history of the nations of the world, but the history of that one nation. In secular history Israel is disregarded as being merely a miserable horde of slaves, and justly so from the standpoint of the historian. The nations to which the Bible pays little attention are much finer to read about, but they have no importance in the Redemptive purpose of God. His purpose was the creation of a nation to be His bondslave, that through that nation all the other nations should come to know Him. The idea that Israel was a magnificently developed type of nation is a mistaken one. Israel was a despised, and a despisable nation, continually turning away from God into idolatry; but nothing ever altered the purpose of God for the nation. The despised element is always a noticeable element in the purpose of God. When the Saviour of the world came, He came of that despised nation; He Himself was “despised and rejected of men,” and in all Christian enterprise there is this same despised element, “things which are despised, hath God chosen.”
The realisation by regeneration of the election of God, and of being made thereby perfectly fit for Him, is the most joyful realisation on earth. When we are born from above (rv mg) we realise the election of God, our being regenerated does not create it. When once we realise that through the salvation of Jesus we are made perfectly fit for God, we understand why Jesus is apparently so ruthless in His claims why He demands such absolute rectitude from the saint: He has given him the very nature of God.
The creative purpose of God for the missionary is to make him His servant, one in whom He is glorified.† When once we realise this, all our self-conscious limitations will be extinguished in the extraordinary blaze of what the Redemption means. We have to see that we keep the windows of our soul open to God’s creative purpose for us, and not confuse that purpose with our own intentions. Every time we do so, God has to crush our intentions and push them on one side, however it may hurt, because they are on the wrong line. We must beware lest we forget God’s purpose for our life.
2. The Election of Perfect Finish for God
God elected a certain nation to be His bondslave, and through that nation a knowledge of His salvation is to come to all the world. The history of that nation is a record of awful idolatry and backsliding, they remained true neither to God’s prophets nor to God Himself; but in spite of everything the fulfilment of God’s purpose for the nation of His choice is certain. The election of the nation by God was not for the salvation of individuals; the elect nation was to be the instrument of salvation to the whole world. The story of their distress is due entirely to their deliberate determination to use themselves for a purpose other than God’s. The beginning of their corruption was their desire to have a king and to be like other nations—“Nay; but we will have a king over us; that we also may be like all the nations; and that our king may judge us, and go out before us, and fight our battles.” Whenever Israel sought to use themselves for their own purposes, God smashed those purposes up.
We must be careful not to confuse the predestination of God by making His election include every individual; or to have the idea that because God elected a certain nation through whom His salvation was to come, therefore every individual of that nation is elected to salvation. The history of the elect nation disproves this, but it does not alter God’s purpose for the nation. Individuals of the elect nation have to be saved in the same way as individuals of nations that have not been elected. Election refers to the unchangeable purpose of God, not to the salvation of individuals. Each individual has to choose which line of predestination he will take—God’s line or the devil’s line. Individual position is determined by individual choice, but that is neither here nor there in connection with God’s purpose for the human race. Individuals enter into the realisation of the creative purpose of God for the human race by being born again of the Spirit; but we must not make the predestination of God for the race to include every individual, any more than God’s predestination for the elect nation included every individual. Salvation is of universal application, but human responsibility is not done away with.
The purpose of God for man is that he should “glorify God and enjoy Him for ever.” Sin has switched the human race off on to another line, but it has not altered God’s purpose for the human race in the tiniest degree. The election of the perfect fitness for God of the human race is abiding. It is exhibited in the Man Christ Jesus, and that is the ideal the human race is destined to reach in spite of all that sin and the devil can do—the “measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.” As Son of Man, Jesus Christ mirrors what the human race is to be like on the basis of Redemption. Sin and the devil may do their worst, but God’s purpose will only be made manifest all the more gloriously (see Romans 5:12-21).
Preparation of the Missionary’s Characteristic
He hath made my mouth like a sharp sword.
The outstanding characteristic of the ancient people of God, of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and of the missionary is the “prophet,” or preaching, characteristic. In the Old Testament the prophet’s calling is placed above that of king and of priest. It is the lives of the prophets that prefigure the Lord Jesus Christ. The character of the prophet is essential to his work. The characteristic of God’s elective purpose in the finished condition of His servant is that of preaching. “It pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe.”
Notice the emphasis that the New Testament places on “confessing,” on “preaching,” and on “testifying,” all expressive of this perfect finish for God. And notice too that it is this characteristic that Satan attacks. He is at the back of the movement abroad to-day which advocates living a holy life, but “don’t talk about it.” Men never suffer because they live a godly life; they suffer for their speech. Humanly speaking, if Our Lord had held His tongue, He would not have been put to death. “If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin.”
A saint is made by God, “He . . . made me.” Then do not tell God He is a bungling workman. We do that whenever we say “I can’t.” To say “I can’t” literally means we are too strong in ourselves to depend on God. “I can’t pray in public; I can’t talk in the open air.” Substitute “I won’t,” and it will be nearer the truth. The thing that makes us say “I can’t” is that we forget that we must rely entirely on the creative purpose of God and on this characteristic of perfect finish for God.
Much of our difficulty comes because we choose our own work—“Oh well, this is what I am fitted for.” Remember that Jesus took a fisherman and turned him into a shepherd. That is symbolical of what He does all the time. Indoor work has to do with civilisation; we were created for out-of-door work, both naturally and spiritually. The idea that we have to consecrate our gifts to God is a dangerous one. We cannot consecrate what is not ours (1 Corinthians 4:7). We have to consecrate ourselves, and leave our gifts alone. God does not ask us to do the thing that is easy to us naturally; He only asks us to do the thing we are perfectly fitted to do by grace, and the cross will always come along that line.
3. The Election of Perfect Fittedness to God
Israel is still in the shadow of God’s hand, in spite of all her wickedness. God’s purposes are always fulfilled, no matter how wide a compass He may permit to be taken first.
The Plan of the Missionary’s Concentration
In the shadow of His hand hath He hid me. (rv)
As applied to the saint, this phrase refers to the experience of knowing, not with a sigh, but with deepest satisfaction, that “in all the world there is none but Thee, my God, there is none but Thee.” The shadow of God’s hand may seem to be the cruellest, most appalling shadow that ever fell on human life, but we shall find what the disciples found—“they feared as they entered the cloud. And suddenly they saw Jesus only with themselves.”†† Never misunderstand the shadow of God’s hand. When He puts us there it is assuredly to lead us into the inner meaning of Philippians 3:10—“that I may know Him.” The stern discipline that looks like distress and chastisement turns out to be the biggest benediction; it is the shadow of God’s hand that keeps us perfectly fitted in Him.
The kindness and the generosity of God is known when once we come under the shadow of His hand. We may kick if we like or fume, and the fingers hurt; but when we stop kicking, the fingers caress. To say “Through the shadow of bereavement I came to know God better,” is different from saying, “God took away my child because I loved him too much.” That is a lie, and contrary to the God of love Jesus revealed. If there is a dark line in God’s face to us, the solution does not lie in saying what is not true to fact, but in bowing our heads and waiting; the explanation is not yet. All that is dark and obscure just now will one day be as radiantly and joyously clear as the truth about God we already know. No wonder our Lord’s counsel is, “Fear not!”