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The focus is not on the selection of individuals, but the group of those chosen. As Westcott notes, "He chose us (i.e. Christians as a body, v. 4) for Himself out of the world." Paul specifies the timing of this choice—it was pretemporal, before the world was created. God made the choice "in him" (that is, "in Christ").
Rather, God must first free the individual from his enslavement to sin to a greater degree than in Arminianism, and then the regenerated heart naturally chooses the good. This work by God is sometimes called irresistible , in the sense that grace enables a person to freely cooperate, being set free from the desire to do the opposite, so that ...
It sets one free from "bondage to sin" and enables "piety towards God, and love towards men, general holiness and purity of life." [128] Calvinist Protestants embrace the idea of predestination, namely, that God chose who would be saved and who would be not saved prior to the creation. They quote Ephesians 1:4 "For he chose us in him before the ...
Unconditional election (also called sovereign election [1] or unconditional grace) is a Calvinist doctrine relating to predestination that describes the actions and motives of God prior to his creation of the world, when he predestined some people to receive salvation, the elect, and the rest he left to continue in their sins and receive the just punishment, eternal damnation, for their ...
St Paul, instead, speaks of God's great plan and says: "even as he (God) chose us in him [Christ] before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him" (Eph 1:4). And he was speaking about all of us. At the centre of the divine plan is Christ in whom God shows his Face, in accord with the favour of his will.
Predestination, in theology, is the doctrine that all events have been willed by God, usually with reference to the eventual fate of the individual soul. [1] Explanations of predestination often seek to address the paradox of free will, whereby God's omniscience seems incompatible with human free will.
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God's mercy is shown to some in both the forgiveness of those guilty of imputed and actual sin and the bestowal of eternal life. On the other hand, God's justice is shown in the permitting of those who are guilty of imputed and actual sin to continue on their chosen path and the bestowal of divine judgment for their unrepentant disobedience.