In Acts 10:34-36 in the Bible, the Apostle Peter answered this question:
“Then Peter replied, ‘I see very clearly that God shows no favoritism. In every nation he accepts those who fear him and do what is right. This is the message of Good News for the people of Israel—that there is peace with God through Jesus Christ, who is Lord of all.’” (NLT)
This was a conversation that took place when Peter was hanging out for the first time in Cornelius the gentile’s living room. Peter had received a vision where God showed him that God’s door of salvation was wide open and all the people once considered “unclean” were now invited into the household of faith. Because of that vision, Peter accepted an invitation to go and share the word of God to Cornelius and his friends and family.
Acts 10:11-16 describes Peter’s vision: “He saw the sky open, and something like a large sheet was let down by its four corners. In the sheet were all sorts of animals, reptiles, and birds. Then a voice said to him, ‘Get up, Peter; kill and eat them.’ ‘No, Lord,’ Peter declared. ‘I have never eaten anything that our Jewish laws have declared impure and unclean.’ But the voice spoke again: ‘Do not call something unclean if God has made it clean.’ The same vision was repeated three times. Then the sheet was suddenly pulled up to heaven.” (NLT)
That same invitation stands for all, no matter how clean or unclean we may be.
Eric, how do you explain Jesus’ prayer in John 17:5-9?
I explain it in the context of the wider biblical narrative of the ever expanding story of God saving the world in Christ. This story is filled with chapters that taken out of the story contradict other parts of the story if not connected to the unfolding narrative. Predestination, fate, free-will, election, destiny…they are strands of human experience with theology and religion that greater minds have wrestled with for ages. The labyrinthine nature of it all can get the better of me at times but I have valued what I have been able to gather from the work.
“Each of us at various periods of life is confronted with certain moral questions that need to be solved. It takes a great deal of effort to attend to them and to seek answers. In every labor, especially at the beginning, there is a time when the work is painfully difficult, when we are tempted to give up. Physical work is painful at first, mental work still more. As Lessing says: “People are inclined to cease to think at the point at which thought begins to be difficult; but it is just there, I would add, that thinking begins to be fruitful.”
-Leo Tolstoy
But that doesn’t answer my question.
God created another ark in the person and work of Jesus, a judgment day approaches which will flood for all eternity and he beckons those He loves to enter in. Those that do will be saved. They are those favored who chose to enter but…all were invited.
Now the mystery to me lies in how the “ark” is brought to each person through the work of the Holy Spirit. Just how all-inclusive, all-gathering up, all-arching over, all-saving was or is this saving work of Christ? I’m excited to see.
I think the human conscience is wrapped up in the favor somehow for those who don’t hear the gospel in its fullness. The “fearing Him and doing what is right” part of the above verse is very beautiful to me. It’s the word of a God who is more generous than I often hear. It give me hope that God is doing something far more marvelous than most of the story lines I hear.
So to me His favor is invitational to all, embracing of more than most think and far more gracious than even many know. But for the ones who know, hear and reject, for those who choose what is wrong with a posture of rebellion….well, for them, I pray.
Eric, okay, so you think the invitation is to all, but you still haven’t addressed the apparently contradictory remarks of Jesus who seemed to suggest that God gave over to Jesus a subset of humanity. He isn’t praying for everyone. He is only praying for those God gave him. What is up with that?
Why should he have to? That’s not a contradiction to me. Whom God chooses, who chooses God and God saw choosing him.
I dont understand your point in parsing foreknowledge or predestination questions about if it is right or wrong for Jesus to pray for those who chose or or were chosen to follow Him.
You seem to be reading into the passage this idea that God simply knew who would choose “Him”. There is no indication of that. What is this idea of God giving certain people to Jesus, but not others? What does that mean? How do you justify it? Why would God give some, but not all? Is that not favoritism?
I get it from romans 8:28-30
“28 And we know that in all things God works for the good of those who love him, who have been called according to his purpose. 29 For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers and sisters. 30 And those he predestined, he also called; those he called, he also justified; those he justified, he also glorified.”
In a human sense my love extends to, favors if you will, my own children more than my neighbors children. I see favor in that sense, as an open, inviting, welcoming shelter, not an exclusive prohibiting determinism.
I don’t see how that analogy works. With God, everyone is his “child” in that we would all be “His” creation. Thus, there would be no “neighbor children”. This verse from Romans seems to support my objection.
Well, that’s my best shot, you’ll have to find greater minds to unravel your question.
Oh stop it 😉
Do you not agree that we would all be God’s “children” and that there would be no “neighbor children”?
I believe acts 17:24-31, where Paul connects the idea of us all being “God’s offspring” but that we all need to repent, which to me is that link between faith & favor, that ive tried to articulate.
24 “The God who made the world and everything in it is the Lord of heaven and earth and does not live in temples built by human hands. 25 And he is not served by human hands, as if he needed anything. Rather, he himself gives everyone life and breath and everything else. 26 From one man he made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and he marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. 27 God did this so that they would seek him and perhaps reach out for him and find him, though he is not far from any one of us. 28 ‘For in him we live and move and have our being.’ As some of your own poets have said, ‘We are his offspring.’ 29 “Therefore since we are God’s offspring, we should not think that the divine being is like gold or silver or stone—an image made by human design and skill. 30 In the past God overlooked such ignorance, but now he commands all people everywhere to repent. 31 For he has set a day when he will judge the world with justice by the man he has appointed. He has given proof of this to everyone by raising him from the dead.”
Okay, so my question is: If we are all God’s “children”, what does it mean that God gave a subset of these “children” to Jesus and that Jesus only prays for these and not everyone else?
Are you saying that this subset refers to those God somehow foreknew would have faith in “Him”?
I’m comfortable with the theological idea that God knows who would chose Christ and that’s the meaning of election i.e. favoritism.
But I am also comfortable with a more reformed leaning view that focuses on God’s place in salvation. There are many passages that show the multiple sides of people’s experience of new birth.
Like in Acts 16:13-14: “On the Sabbath we went outside the city gate to the river, where we expected to find a place of prayer. We sat down and began to speak to the women who had gathered there. 14 One of those listening was a woman from the city of Thyatira named Lydia, a dealer in purple cloth. She was a worshiper of God. The Lord opened her heart to respond to Paul’s message.”
Lydia was obviously a prayerful seeker.
Paul preached the gospel.
Lydia chose to listen to the message.
God opened her heart.
Lydia was baptized.
Here are a few other verse where the bible articulates this mysterious process of new life in Christ.
John 1:12
“But to all who believed him and accepted him, he gave the right to become children of God.”
Galatians 4:4-6
“But when the right time came, God sent his Son, born of a woman, subject to the law. God sent him to buy freedom for us who were slaves to the law, so that he could adopt us as his very own children. And because we are his children, God has sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, prompting us to call out, “Abba, Father.”
John 11:51-53:
51 He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, 52 and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. 53 So from that day on they plotted to take his life.”
So, why do you suppose that Jesus uses this strange language of God *giving* him certain people? Why wouldn’t Jesus have prayed something like, “I pray for all those you have known from the beginning will believe”?
There is the reality of the human constraint of the incarnation. The God-in-flesh dynamic is at play in the gospels. So for me it seems there is a human example aspect of the Jesus as model part of the incarnation. He didn’t walk around as the eternal Son, with all systems go, he was the last Adam with its human limitations.
This discussion about God choosing people is laid out in Roman’s 9 even more. Paul expresses his heart for his own people:
” 2 My heart is filled with bitter sorrow and unending grief 3 for my people, my Jewish brothers and sisters. I would be willing to be forever cursed—cut off from Christ!—if that would save them. 4 They are the people of Israel, chosen to be God’s adopted children.”
“Chosen to be adopted”
Then in verse 11-12 Paul says: “This message shows that God chooses people according to his own purposes; he calls people, but not according to their good or bad works.”
I beleive God favors His children, who have been adopted by faith in Christ. A person in the OT didn’t have to be born a Jew to be a follower of God and adopted into the people of God. They had to submit to circumcision and follow the law of Moses. They chose to become part of Israel, God’s chosen people.
The same reality exists today I believe. We choose to place our faith in Christ and baptism is that new covenant outward defining act of community. I believe God is the initiator and I am the responder. I believe there is a eternal reality to that process and a temporal reality.
I can’t explain its mystery with full comprehension just like I can’t explain the mystery of human conception. There are parts I can explain biologically and sexually but the concept of life, soul, consciousness, mind…that part is unexplainable. I see salvation in the same way, part explainable, part mystery. I can apprehend it but not fully comprehend it.
Eric, are you saying that Jesus, in his humanity, was falling victim to being vague and ambiguous? But if God intended all of this to be part of a divinely inspired narrative, why wouldn’t “He” clarify matters?
“I beleive God favors His children, who have been adopted by faith in Christ.”
Favors how?
“We choose to place our faith in Christ…”
In what sense do we choose? What about people who just aren’t convinced that there even is a God? How does this apply to them?
“I believe God is the initiator and I am the responder.”
God is the initiator how? Again, what about those who never ‘feel’ God and don’t even know if “He” exists?
Ryan a question for every question can be endless. I did my best to address your original question, sorry if its not helpful, that’s what I got on that one.
…in response to Ryan’s question about Jesus’ prayer in John 17: 5-9: Jesus is praying specifically for his disciples in that passage. But in verse 20, “My prayer is not for them alone. I pray also for those who will believe….”
Maybe I haven’t quite grasped the whole of your conversation, Ryan, but from the looks of things, your question might have been much more easily answered if you had read on through the rest of the chapter.
When I see questions about the bible, faith and Christianity that can’t seem to be satisfied “enough”, I begin to feel like the questions are no longer motivated by a desire to learn, but a desire to argue/debate.
My resolve then is simply to answer the question with a question; why do I see this so clearly, and you don’t?
For much of scripture, the answers to most questions can be easily discovered simply by reading it ALL. However, if it were “all” able to be explained with human reason and rationale, where then would be the need for faith?