Seeking Jesus First Aug. 14, 2025
Be even more diligent to make your call and election sure.
“But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. For he who lacks these things is shortsighted, even to blindness, and has forgotten that he was cleansed from his old sins. Therefore, brethren, be even more diligent to make your call and election sure, for if you do these things you will never stumble; for so an entrance will be supplied to you abundantly into the everlasting kingdom of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.” (2 Peter 1:5–11, NKJV)
There are two sides of a call and two sides of a choosing. “Call” means invitation. “Election” means choosing. We are invited to answer the call and receive the election. It is similar to a wedding proposal. The engagement is a mutual agreement to proceed with the unity of marriage. In that day and age, the engagement was often pre-arranged by parents. A man may choose a woman, but the woman may not accept the choosing.
Israel was chosen by God. However, not all of Israel received the choosing. In the end, Israel as a nation, and The Law as a religion was destroyed due to their faithless rejection of it. The LORD Jesus, who was born of the tribe of Judah, initiated a new and better covenant becoming the Chief Apostle and High Priest of our Confession and Faith. Jesus became the new “Lawgiver” of this new covenant. He was a better architect and built a better house than Moses built. Israel and the rest of the world are now invited into the election of Christ Jesus. Once we answer the call, as a “bride”, we submit and align ourselves with our “Husband”. We accept His nature, His language, His culture, and His dominion, (Faith, Virtue, Knowledge, Self Control, Perseverance, Godliness, Brotherly Kindness, and Love). This makes our calling and election sure - “firm, firmly grounded, guaranteed, unalterable, and valid”.