Who Chooses Who to Salvation- Election
The question in salvation becomes, does God choose us or do we choose God, or both. To answer this we need to understand about election and depravity of man.
Has God chosen the elect from the beginning, for salvation.
God planned the death of Jesus Christ before the foundation of the world, which means that God planned for sinners to be redeemed which meant that He must have planned the allowance for sinners to fall. God created the world planning that He was going to redeem the world.
We were chosen before we were born; even before there was a world. God has predetermined who would be saved or elected, before they were ever born?
2 Thess. 2:13 “We should always give thanks to God for you, brethren beloved of God, because God has chosen you from the beginning for salvation.”
Eph. 1:3,4 "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ," "just as He chose us in Him," "before the foundation of the world."
Those that are not 'elect' have not been chosen and are not in the 'Book of life'. These will end up in an eternity of Hell.
Rev. 20:15 And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.
Who chooses who first?
Unless God makes the first move by electing us and drawing us to Him, we will never try to seek Him out. Scripture is clear that all of man is affected by sin that “no one seeks after God".
Romans 3:10-11: "None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God."
Romans 8:7-8: "Because the carnal mind is enmity against God; for it is not subject to the law of God, nor indeed can be. So then, those who are in the flesh cannot please God.”
1 Corinthians 2:14: "The natural person does not accept the things of the Spirit of God, for they are folly to him, and he is not able to understand them because they are spiritually discerned."
Let us consider Romans 9:22,23
Rom 9:22,23 What if God, wanting to show His wrath and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that He might make known the riches of His glory on the vessels of mercy, which He had prepared beforehand for glory,
God says, I prepare vessels for glory, but vessels are prepared for destruction. The responsibility for such preparation lies right in the very heart of the man.
God says in Rom 9:22 is passive, vessels of wrath fitted to destruction. God did not create anyone for wrath, but that they were “fitted for destruction.” That is, mankind has fitted himself for destruction. It is God who prepared these vessels; they have prepared themselves for destruction because they would not leave their sin and turn to God.
God says in Rom 9:23 that vessels of mercy He had prepared to glory. God elects certain people beforehand for His glory; before the foundation of the world God chose certain people to be His children in order that He would be glorified.
From all eternity, before we even existed, before the foundation of the world, God decided to save some members of the human race and to let the rest of the human race perish. God chose some individuals to be saved into everlasting blessedness in heaven and others He chose to pass over, to allow them to follow the consequences of their sins into eternal torment in hell."
