Monday, April 01, 2019

Choose Life - Article 17/39

XVII. OF PREDESTINATION AND ELECTION
PREDESTINATION to Life is the everlasting purpose of God, whereby (before the foundations of the world were laid) he hath constantly decreed by his counsel secret to us, to deliver from curse and damnation those whom he hath chosen in Christ out of mankind, and to bring them by Christ to everlasting salvation, as vessels made to honour. Wherefore, they which be endued with so excellent a benefit of God be called according to God's purpose by his Spirit working in due season: they through Grace obey the calling: they be justified freely: they be made sons of God by adoption: they be made like the image of his only-begotten Son Jesus Christ: they walk religiously in good works, and at length, by God's mercy, they attain to everlasting felicity.

As the godly consideration of Predestination, and our Election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earthly members, and drawing up their mind to high and heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish and confirm their faith of eternal Salvation to be enjoyed through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their love towards God: So, for curious and carnal persons, lacking the Spirit of Christ, to have continually before their eyes the sentence of God's Predestination, is a most dangerous downfal, whereby the Devil doth thrust them either into desperation, or into wretchlessness of most unclean living, no less perilous than desperation.

Furthermore, we must receive God's promises in such wise, as they be generally set forth to us in holy Scripture: and, in our doings, that Will of God is to be followed, which we have expressly declared unto us in the Word of God.

Martyn Percy suggests that there are two great questions which should accompany a student into seminary (training for ministry). They are the Jesus question, 'Who do you say that I am?' Followed shortly by the identity question, 'And who are you?'

These questions are good companions when non-academic Christian potential leaders are taken through the training process. It can be a bit of a shock.

I would like to suggest that they are questions on which all Christians, trained for service or not, should ponder.

This Article, with its continued background of 'those in Christ' (taken as a whole not individually), is unerringly positive. O'Donovan points out that we wait throughout the Article for the balancing condemnation of the 'Foreordination to death...' but it never comes. It had been there in the antecedent writings but Cranmer leaves it out.

This Article is all about the good things available to those who choose Christ; as it is written it is unable to contemplate anyone making any other choice. Quite so.

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