lot of people may have that popu lar misconception. Some evidently feel that all they need to do is to accept the Lord and they will be finished with all of their problems. But this is not God's purpose in redeeming mankind. He did not save us to make us happy, but that we might be holy, without blame, and prepared to live with Him for evermore. This does not mean that we cannot have joy or that there is something wrong in living a happy and contented life. When He speaks of our lives being without blame, He desires that we should be free from any fault or blemish. We are living in an exceedingly dirty and filthy world. No matter where we look there is growing degradation and immorality. No doubt it is more difficult today as never before to be without blame before the Lord. This, however, is what God's stand ard is for our lives. He does not leave us hopeless or helpless. He provides the complete armour and promises, "Greater is he that is in you, than he that is in the world." In verse five we find a further definition on the subject of elec tion which reads, "Having predes tinated us into the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his w ill." Many translators feel that the last two words of the fourth verse, "in love," should actually be included with the opening state ment of the fifth verse. In this case, we can read it, "In love having pre destinated u s ..,." What a power ful truth that suggests to us. Our salvation is all of love, it is through divine compassion and grace that we have received the fullness of God's unmatched and unparalleled spiritual blessings.
Verse four refers to election while verse five deals with predestina tion. To some people these terms may seem to be synonymous. And, in a certain sense, they are related, although they do not mean exactly the same thing. Election looks at the place from which we have been taken while predestination consid ers the place to which we will be going. We have been elected out of our own wicked state as well as the sinfulness of this world. We are predestinated, however, to eternal life in glory with our Lord Jesus Christ by grace through faith. The famed Negro scientist George Washington Carver often remarked, "Measure me not by the heights to which I have ascended but rath er measure me by the depths from which I've come." That would be a good testimony for a Christian as well who says with the Psalmist David of old, "He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay [that is election], and set my feet upon a rock, and estab lished my goings" [that is predes tination] (Psalm 40:2). In love our Lord Jesus Christ predestinated us to become the children of God. But that love is not focalized on just a select few. I Timothy 2:3-4 reminds us that God will have all men to be saved and to come into the knowledge of the truth. What about this matter of adop tion? That, too, is a tremendous doctrine and it is an unspeakable spiritual blessing! We are now in God's family! The word "adoption" simply means "to take by choice into relationship." We have some friends who have four children. For the first year of their married life they were given no children, and so they adopted a boy. Then, al- Page 21
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