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Pastor Cucuzza on Election, Foreknowledge, and Predestination

Correcting the “Reformed” Interpretation of Ephesians 2:8-9 (+)

Ephesians 1:4-5 explained without Exhaustive Divine Determinism (EDD), and free will involvement.

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Whosoever Believes in Christ Will Become Chosen IN CHRIST (Ephesians 1:3-14) | By Dr. Leighton Flowers, Soteriology101

How one comes to be in Christ is by hearing the Gospel and believing, and then you’re marked in Christ. God has destined beforehand that if you are in Christ (i.e. if you believe in Christ), you will be saved.

This analogy really helps people to see it from this vantage point.

If a storm was coming and a messenger was sent from God saying that a huge storm like no other was coming through and everybody was going to perish. God has placed a Fortress in the middle of the city, and anybody who gets into this Fortress will live. Anybody who stays outside The Fortress will surely die.

The storm comes. Everybody who believes the messenger and gets into The Fortress lives, and everybody outside The Fortress dies. So you could rightly say that it was predestined that those people in The Fortress would live, and it was predestined (and determined beforehand) that everybody outside The Fortress would die.

Notice I have not said anything about God destining who would and would not get into The Fortress. Choosing to run to The Fortress, that is your responsibility.

Well, Christ is our Fortress. So the warning is, if you get into Christ through faith, here are the spiritual blessings that he has destined beforehand: (1) he will save you, (2) he will conform you, (3) he will bring you to where he wants you to be in your Christian walk through circumstances in life, and (4) he will let you live a life participating in the Spirit. But it’s your responsibility to put your faith in him, to trust in him.

It so valuable to understand we do hold to a robust teaching of the doctrine of predestination. We believe the doctrine of predestination. Our source of hope is in the fact that I know my adoption is coming because God has predestined for my adoption according to Romans 8:23, and that God has predestined for those who choose to believe in Christ to be adopted. We eagerly await for our adoption and the redemption of our bodies.

So how do I know I am going to be adopted, and will be brought up to the mansion God has prepared for me? I know that because God has predestined beforehand that spiritual blessing for those who put their faith in Christ. So your responsibility is to put your faith in Christ, get into His Fortress, and then you will live. If you remain outside The Fortress then you will surely die but that’s your fault, not because God didn’t really love you, not because you were created from the womb to be destined for destruction, not because God is demonstrating his wrath through you or created you to to be an object of his wrath. Those teachings are just baggage that’s been added on to the teachings of the Church years after the first century. They were not even introduced into the Church until Augustine, in the fifth century, taught these concepts.

And when you begin to just tear that wrong stuff off that baggage that’s been put on to the Scripture, the Gospel is so much more simple it is so clear, it is so beautiful, and yes it maintains God’s sovereignty and his goodness and his grace, and your responsibility in the whole process. Doesn’t it show the love that God has for everyone by giving them the same Fortress to come into.

The people did not build the Fortress themselves by entering it. God provides the Fortress for all the world. You choose to come in that Fortress, or you choose to stay outside where death and destruction are certain.