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"Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God. For our gospel came not unto you
in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance . . . . . ye
became followers . . . . . having received the word in much affliction, with joy of the Holy
Ghost" (I Thess. 1: 4-6).
To the ordinary Jew or Greek, the preaching of Jesus Christ and Him crucified is a
stumbling-block and foolishness, but "unto them which are called, both Jews and Greeks,
Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God" (I Cor. 1: 23, 24).
A few verses further on, we find "calling" and "choice" placed together in the same
passage: "For ye see your calling . . . . . God hath chosen the foolish" (I Cor. 1: 26, 27).
Returning to Rom. 8: we read: "Whom He called, them He also justified"
(Rom. 8: 30). It is certain, therefore, that those whom the Lord thus calls will respond,
for their justification is also assured.
Justification is "by faith" (Rom. 1: 17; 3: 28), and "by grace' (Titus 3: 7). Those
justified were before "ungodly" (Rom. 5: 6), and had "come short of the glory of God"
(Rom. 3: 23, 24).
This gift of righteousness to those who did not previously possess it, is the great
underlying plan of the message of Romans, and its exposition has occupied us in some
form or other throughout this series. No one can enter into glory who is not righteous.
He must either be righteous in himself and by his own works, or failing that, he must
have a righteousness provided freely by the grace of God through the redemption that is
in Christ Jesus. Predestination to glory does not ignore the sinfulness of man or the
holiness of God. It includes all that is necessary to ensure the presentation, as holy and
without blemish, of all those who are chosen in Christ, in whatever sphere of glory may
be theirs.
The Epistle to the Romans frankly recognizes that "all have sinned and come short of
the glory of God", and unless this shortcoming can be righteously cancelled, it is clear
that predestination to glory would be as impossible to God as it is impossible for Him to
lie. Consequently, the chapter that states emphatically that all have failed to glory, states
just as surely that both the sinner and God Himself are justified in the process of
salvation. The deliverance of the sinner is "through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus". Christ has been "publicly set forth as a propitiation", so that a righteous ground
has been provided, which can never be challenged by angel or man--a righteous ground
upon which the love of God can embrace the sinner, the holiness of God meet his sin and
the righteousness of God be declared in the very act. In other words, salvation has been
so arranged that "He might be just, and the justifier of him which believeth in Jesus"
(Rom. 3: 26).
It is a joy, therefore, to note that the next references to the glory of God speak either of
Abraham, the believer's pattern of justification by faith (Rom. 4: 20), or of the believer