SufferingSoverGod.48096.i04.qxd
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“All the Good That Is Ours in Christ”
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Pharaoh, divine deliverance is our only hope (see Eph. 2:1-10 and Col. 2:13-15 with Ex. 13:3). As Jesus told Nicodemus, we must be born again of God’s Spirit if we are to see his kingdom (see John 3:1-8). But such a birth comes “not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will”; we must be “born of God” (John 1:13, NIV). “No one can come to me,” Jesus said to the grumbling Jews, “unless the Father who sent me draws him” (John 6:44); “no one can come to me,” he reiterated to his disciples moments later, “unless the Father enables him” (6:65, NIV). God must put his Spirit within us and thus cause us—yes, cause us44—to walk in his righteousness (see Ezek. 36:27). “By his own choice,” James declares to his Christian brothers and sisters, “he gave birth to us by the message of the truth” (James 1:18, New Jerusalem Bible). The Spirit runs along the pathway of God’s holy Word (see John 6:63), but our hearts will open to receive him as the supernatural source of spiritual life only if God enables us to hear the word of the gospel with faith (see Gal. 3:2 with Eph. 2:8-10 and Acts 16:14). And so it is with all of us as it was with the Gentiles in Antioch of Pisidia: as we hear the gospel preached, just as many of us as God has ordained to eternal life will believe (see Acts 13:48 with Rom. 10:14-17).45 44 In the ESV, Ezekiel 36:27 reads: “And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules.” The Hebrew for “cause” is >asah, which, as we have already seen, means to do or make. Most English versions translate it here as “cause”; the NIV’s atypical “move” seems much too weak because someone can move someone else to do something without actually causing the person to act in that way. Rendering >asah as “cause” harmonizes with the fact that Scripture always represents us as passive in the process of spiritual rebirth. Regeneration—which is the technical term, when it is used in its theologically narrower sense, for our being born again—is entirely God’s work. 45 The Greek word that is translated as “appointed” in the ESV for Acts 13:48 is tassø, which can be translated as appoint or order or ordain. Thus, the RSV reads: “And when the Gentiles heard this, they were glad and glorified the word of God; and as many as were ordained to eternal life believed.” The primacy of God in the entire process of our salvation is emphasized by Scripture’s assumption that he chooses those who come to faith. See, e.g., 1 Thessalonians 1:4f.—“we know, brothers loved by God, that he has chosen you, because our gospel came to you not only in word, but also in power and in the Holy Spirit and with full conviction”—and 2 Thessalonians 2:13—“But we ought always to give thanks to God for you, brothers beloved by the Lord, because God chose you as the firstfruits to be saved, through sanctification by the Spirit and belief in the truth”—as well as Psalm 65:4—“Blessed is the one you choose and bring near, to dwell in your courts!” F. F. Bruce emphasizes God’s sovereignty in this process in the way that he translates Ephesians 1:11—“It was in Christ, too, that we were claimed by God as his portion, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will.” He comments: The verb translated “we were claimed . . . as his portion” has been rendered more freely in a number of recent versions. . . . But we are dealing with a passive form of the verb which means “appoint by lot,” “allot,” “assign,” and the passive sense should be brought out unless there is good reason to the contrary. The reason for the rendering “we were claimed by God as his portion” (rather than “we were assigned our portion”) is that it is in keeping with OT precedent [see, e.g., Deut. 32:8f.]. . . . [H]ere, believers in Christ are God’s chosen people, claimed by him as his portion or heritage. . . . The idea of the divine foreordination is repeated from verse 5. There God is said to