Session 3: Unconditional Election

The Meaning of Unconditional Election

It's my pleasure to introduce our speaker this morning, Pastor Bruce Bennett. Pastor Bennett has been in bivocational ministry since 1987. He was licensed to minister in 1998, was ordained as an elder in 2004, and as a pastor in 2005 at the Grace Gospel Church in Patchogue, New York.

He holds a three-year biblical studies diploma from Christ for the Nations, a BA from Dowling College, an MA from SUNY at Stony Brook, and a certificate from Princeton Theological Seminary. Pastor Bruce is the founder of Word of Truth Church, and with his wife, Linda, and their three children, have established this church for the glory of God and building up of God's people in the Farmingville-Center Reach area of Long Island.

Bruce's other vocation has been teaching in Long Island's public schools since 1989, currently teaching history, government, and law at Freeport High School. Bruce also serves as the chairman for the Long Island Family Coalition, which he founded in 2006, and has run for the New York State Legislature three times, serves as a committeeman in the Republican Party, and has participated in over 20 publicly-moderated debates on topics ranging from atheism to modalism.

Bruce was saved in 1983 and was an Arminian for the first 14 years of his walk with Christ. After studying Reformed theology for seven years, he became Reformed in his soteriology. So, Bruce, come and speak to us about God's unconditional election.

Thank you, Pastor Rich. Thank you, everybody, for having me this morning. I want to extend warm greetings from Farmingville, a place that the congregants here in this church know well, at least if you've been here a while, because you, too, were in the same location that we are in presently, right there on Fortune Road and Royal Plaza.

So, it's a joy to be with you this morning, and a real honor to speak on this amazing grace that we are examining this weekend. And I get to, I've been chosen to speak on unconditional election, the fact that God has chosen us unconditionally in Christ.

Of all the letters from the blessed acronym TULIP, arguably the most powerful and positive one is the U, meaning unconditional election. This explains the choice God made in adopting us into his family before we were born out of the vast sea of humanity that chose to reject Christ in the Garden of Eden as Lord and Savior.

As we see in Romans 5 .12, we all sinned in Adam and jettisoned our relationship with God as a human race in the Garden of Eden, yet in God's amazing grace, he unconditionally chose some of those rebels, you and I, to have a relationship with him.

So, out of our spiritual deadness, as was illustrated to us beautifully last night by our two speakers, God brought us into spiritual life without condition. I agree with Anthony's summation last night of the importance of the doctrine of total depravity, for it gives us the foundational groundwork for the understanding of how God saves sinners.

As we analyze the U in the acronym TULIP, we notice that it is the primary aspect of God's plan in salvation revealed to us where the L, the I, and the P come out of it because it explains to us how God is going to save us, the L, the I, the P, but in unconditional election, it's explained to us why God is doing the atoning, the irresistible drawing, the irresistible gracing, and then persevering through his people.

So, perhaps the U is central to understanding the acronym TULIP in perhaps the greatest way of magnifying the reason why we're in this economy of grace that God has chosen us to be a part of. The primary reason for God revealing to us that we are unconditionally accepted in his forever family is to properly establish our identity as his children, as his bride, and as his saints.

But this doctrine does not stop there. It also has the sanctifying purposes of removing any basis for pride, for boasting, for taking credit, for glorifying oneself, and removes the basis for jealousy and envy since whatever is good in another is merely a manifestation of God's provision in their lives whereby he should be getting the glory and the credit alone for the essential differences that exist between us.

So, this morning we have the honor of diving into a topic that is going to enable us to better understand and really give us the foundation to understand what our next speakers are gonna be speaking about this following day, today, rather, this afternoon and later this morning.

It is because of God's amazing grace and amazing love that he bestowed upon us in the beloved. Now, in terms of an Old Testament verse, as we begin to focus our attention on Scripture to undergird this doctrine of unconditional election, I draw your attention this morning to 1 Samuel 12.

And it's my favorite verse on this topic in verse 22, for the Lord will not forsake his people for his great namesake because it is pleased the Lord to make you a people for himself. Notice the attention is on God.

God made us a people for himself. And of course, grace has to be understood in terms of what it actually means. Grace means favor. So, when God looks at the vast group of humanity as we just described in Romans 5, 12, he sees a group of humanity that in Adam, all of us in Adam have already rejected Christ in the Garden of Eden.

Remember, it was the Lord who walked in the cool of the day. And when Adam and Eve rejected, we also, the whole human race, collectively rejected Christ. So, that's why we're born dead in sins and trespasses.

So, God, by gracing or favoring his people those whom he chose, and the word chose, as you can see, comes from the Greek word, ek lega mahi, ek lega mahi is a verb, and it actually comes from the root ek lego of God speaking, God saying.

We should draw your attention to Romans 10, 17. Romans 10, 17 says that faith comes by hearing and hearing by the word of God. And there's two different words there for word. In the Greek, you have rhema and you have logos, and you have rhema, God speaking to his people, coming out of their death tomb, out of their spiritual death, he's speaking life into those whom he loves.

We know that Romans 8 and Revelation 3 tells, and Hebrews 12 tells us that there are those whom he loves. Does he love the whole world? Yes, in a general sense. We all love our neighbors, but if my wife comes through the door, watch out, gentlemen, you better keep your eyes to yourself, because that's my lady, I got my eyes on my woman, and that's my wife, and I got a special love for her that's unique in terms of its relational quality.

So, when we understand God choosing, we have to marry it to the idea of grace, and the word grace, meaning favor, God is putting his favor, just like I chose my wife, I favored her over other women, I chose her, I picked her, I drew her to myself, and asked her to marry me, I said, will you come and be my wife?

Will you join me in marriage? Now, in her case, she had an option. We, as dead sinners, are going to, and I'm not gonna steal Eli's thunder, irresistibly come alive. We're gonna irresistibly, because when God declares life, when God speaks, as Anthony said last night, to a Lazarus to come forth, those dead molecules, those dead atoms are gonna become alive instantaneously.

So, as we see how God, in terms of choosing us, and how that's manifested in terms of its description, as an adjective, we are the elect, we are his bride, we are his saints, we are his children, we see that this doctrine of unconditional election establishes a solid identity for the believer.

In a world that is so confused that it can't even figure out gender, not to mention other things, and a church that has gone all over the map with its description of salvation, its description of what a believer really is, we have the sure, sacred ground of God's word anchoring us in our true identity as God's forever graced people, because the word graced and chosen mean the same thing, because, again, grace is favor.

If I have three objects up here and I favor the one object, let's say it's in the middle, then I chose it, it's now mine. God is my father, I am his child. He's the heavenly groom, I am the bride. He gives me a robe of righteousness, I am his saint.

Now, Sam Storms makes an interesting point regarding this doctrine. He says, like everything else that God does, election has a goal. The immediate goal of election is the salvation of those chosen. God has chosen us from the beginning to be saved.

Of course, this doesn't mean that the eternal destiny of individuals is the only object of election. The nation Israel is the recipient of God's elective blessing in that the physical descendants of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob were chosen to be the heirs of temporal, earthly, theocratic privileges.

Jesus Christ himself was the object of an electing act by God, the Father. He is, in a very special sense, God's chosen one. So we get to see how God's choosing is applied in different ways in scripture.

So Jesus himself was chosen, he was elected to what? To come into this world for the mission of saving his people. Declaring the truth and saving his people, primarily. So we know that the word for choosing can be applied in different ways.

But this morning, we're gonna focus on how God chose us, his individual daughters and sons, to be in his eternal family. Sam Storms goes on and says, the church as a collective body is also chosen of God.

And even in the case of individuals, election is not always the salvation in life. Some, such as kings, prophets, apostles, are chosen to office and service. But the will of God for his electors does not terminate when they come to saving faith in Christ.

Paul makes it clear that God the Father chose us in Christ in order that we should be holy and blameless in his glorious presence. The apostle Peter likewise insists that God has chosen a people in order that they may obey Jesus.

So this is not just chosen so we can just say, hey, I am chosen, I've won the divine lottery, so to speak. Not a lottery, because God doesn't choose arbitrarily. God chooses by purpose. He has a purpose in electing us in his family.

But some people like to think of it in those terms. No, we're not gonna celebrate some type of divine lottery. We're not gonna celebrate some type of gambling event. No, we celebrate the Lord himself for putting his grace, putting his spirit on us so we can be a trophy of grace, oaks of righteousness for the display of his splendor.

Why?

So he can get all the glory. So he can get all the honor. So he can get all the praise so that there's no more division in the body because we're all united because of that common, saving grace that he bestowed upon us.

And that is the only reason why we're in Christ. It's not that I was smart enough to figure this thing out. It wasn't that I was able to morally become sensitive enough to say, hey, I'm gonna choose Christ.

After all, why does one person believe and another person not believe? The only logical and biblical answer is that the person who believes was graced, was chosen, was elected by God. The word chosen, elect, as we've seen, mean the same thing.

And again, it's not a divine dice roll here. No, God had a purpose in placing his revelation of himself on your life. And that purpose, again, is to glorify him. It's not about us and it's not for our own glory, not to us, not to us, but to you be all the glory.

And there is the purpose right there, that we are trophies of grace. We are clay jars filled with his spirit for the display of his honor and glory. And we've been given that motivation now to proclaim his glory, to proclaim his grace by living it out in holiness.

Because as Titus 2 .11 and 12 reminds us that the grace of God teaches us to say no to ungodliness. So not only does it save us and position us and give us our correct identity, but it also gives us the proper motivation now to live out the identity that we have.

If I am a son, I wanna be a pleasing son. If I'm his bride, I wanna be a pleasing bride. If I'm his saint, I want to be a pleasing saint. I wanna maximize all that God has invested in me.

Why?

So that he can get a great return on his investment. 30-fold, 60-fold, 100-fold. Not out of a motive of self-aggrandizement, but out of a motive of humble service, out of a motive of love. The doctrines of grace and this doctrine especially, which tells us why we've been placed into the beloved, into this economy of salvation, it gives us the motivation of love.

God first loved us because he first loved us. Now I'm able to what? Love him and love others, right? The work he started, he's going to complete it. I have the assurance that he's going to continue this work.

And to the degree that I obey him, I'm gonna be rewarded if my eye is not on the prize, if my eye is on simply loving him, serving him. So it removes any area of competition. Am I better than another?

Am I more wise than somebody else? No, this totally removes it. This doctrine totally levels out the playing field and makes sure that no one's gonna boast in his presence. Because even in our sanctification where we can make decisions as to how well we're going to please the Lord, we understand that it's only God that's actually moving us to become like him.

Ultimately, even in our sanctification, even in the areas that we're obeying the Lord, in terms of prayer and worship and our devotion to the Lord and our love for others and all the other good works God calls us to walk in, ultimately, the credit goes back to him.

Even in our sanctification, because it's he who's working in us for his good pleasure. We understand that this doctrine did not just come out of nowhere. This doctrine actually has a history. This doctrine that God's saving us before we were even born.

We were already saved in God's economy. He chose us before the world was even made in Christ. And in fact, in the history of the church, this doctrine has early church proponents. No, they didn't systematically formulate this doctrine, but men such as Clement of Rome, Barnabas, Ignatius, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, Ambrose of Milan, all had elaborated this doctrine to some degree.

And in fact, in church history, you'll find out that Augustine did later in his life, part of his confessions was he, like me and many believers, started off as an Arminian. In fact, Spurgeon said that all Christians start off as Arminians.

But later in life, Augustine came clean in his book on grace and free will, and he discovered what scripture plainly teaches, and that is that salvation, as Jonah says, is of the Lord. Not partially, 100%.

So did Thomas Aquinas. Again, not in systematic fashion, like you find in the Council of Dort or in the writings of Luther and Calvin, or even in the preachings of Spurgeon and Whitefield, but you'll even find it in the Council of Orange, for example, in the 6th century.

So whether it be partially in Aquinas, Council of Orange, or more fully in Augustine, but definitely systematized in the Reformation, because over the course of church history, they were able to bring these teachings together in a way that now we can really systematically, in the sense of proving it in a very holistic manner, these were fleshed out by those men on that timeline that you can see there, and of course, there were many others.

These are just some of the movers and shakers that are worth mentioning at this point. James Montgomery Boyce is noted by saying, since grace is the source of the life that is mine, and faith is a gift from on high, I'll boast of my Savior, all merit decline, and glorify God till I die.

So again, as a living epistle that God is writing his story through, as a jar of clay that God is filling with his spirit, we are those Isaiah 60 oaks of righteousness, on display, not of our own strength, but of his.

And that's why when somebody praises us, we can be a praise deflector and allow the praise to go to the God who it belongs to, earnestly and honestly and meaningfully from the heart. And our love to God and others is without pretense.

It's true love, because the love that was given to us was unconditional, and we can now unconditionally love each other. No strings attached.

And that's what love is.

Love is giving of self for the betterment of the other, as Philippians 2 explains, considering each other better than yourselves. That's biblical love. John 13 takes New Testament love and places it exactly where we understand the fullness of grace.

Jesus said, love each other as I have loved you. That's impossible in your own strength, but it's possible through God. It's possible through his spirit. And that's the goal of us. That's the goal of our lives, saints.

The goal of our lives is to produce that love. No strings attached, not looking for reward from each other or from God. That's when we're going to be most pleasing in his sight. Because we'll be giving him all the glory,.

Him all the honor.

Because after all, as Pastor Jim said, it's all about God.

God is the sovereign ruler,.

And he rightly deserves all the glory. And certainly salvation is not exempted from his economy of being glorified chiefly and supremely. We ask the question, as Packer once did, okay, so we have those that want to militate against this belief system.

The Arminians who claim that we play a role in our salvation, that God looks down the quarters of history and only elects us because we elected him in God's foreknowledge. Of course, they don't understand the proper word of foreknowledge.

Prognosis or prognosico, they don't understand the verb or the adjective form of that which has nothing to do with God learning something. After all, if God learns something, he's not God. God doesn't learn anything, right?

He already has full knowledge, number one. Number two, it's a relational term. Amos chapter three, it says, of all the nations, Israel, only have I known you or have I chosen you, depending upon your translation.

Foreknowledge is simply talking about that God is in a relationship, okay, prior to us even being born, he's already entered into a relationship with us in adopting us, in calling us, in choosing us to be part of his family.

That's why it's ironic that the Arminian would choose to insist that we should pray for unsaved loved ones, isn't it? Because in addition to the first question I raised before, why does one believe in another not?

There's another question you should ask your Arminian friend, and that's this. If it's man's free will decision to come to Christ, if it's merely just a free will choice that actuates salvation, if man is the final determiner in his salvific decision, okay, then why should we pray for them?

Why would we want God to interfere with their, quote, free will? It's no longer free. The deck is stacked. It's loaded dice there. It's no longer free will. You just violated your own tenant of, quote, free will.

And that's why Packard goes on and says, you pray for the conversion of others, in what terms now do you intercede for them? Do you limit yourself to asking that God will bring them to a point where they can save themselves independently of him?

I don't think you do. I think that you do is to pray in categorical terms that God will quite simply and decisively save them, that he will open the eyes of their understanding, soften their hard hearts, renew their natures, and move their wills to receive the Savior.

You ask God to work in them everything necessary for their salvation. You would not dream of making it a point in your prayer that you were not asking God actually to bring them to faith because you recognize that it's something he cannot do, nothing of the sort.

When you pray for unconverted people, you do so on the assumption that it is in God's power to bring them to faith. You entreat him to do that very thing, and your confidence in asking rests upon the certainty that he's able to do what you ask him.

Hence, there's a clear contradiction. And they shouldn't be praying if they want to maintain free will. So this is another major evidence to simply raise as a question. And I suggest that's how we approach our Arminian brothers and sisters.

I do not believe Arminians are unsaved. I think an Arminian can be unsaved depending upon their rejection once they understand the fullness of grace. And the fullness, I think there's a certain point where they can actually adopt works as the ultimate basis for their salvation.

As I brought up in my debate with Dr. Michael Brown back in 2013, if faith is not a gift which Arminians don't believe it is, all right, it's a mental machination. It's something that you can conjure up from your own mind.

Hence, it's a work. The word work in Greek is ergon. You know your brain burns 20 of your calories a day? The more you think, the more calories you burn. So therefore, if faith is not a gift, it's a mental energy that's then placed in Christ, it's your work.

Faith becomes a work then in the Arminian system. Unfortunately, Michael Brown didn't understand what I was saying and made some peculiar judgments as to what I was saying to him. He didn't understand what I was trying to make the point as.

But faith, if it's not a work, which the Bible clearly says, is by necessity a gift of God. It's God's gift. And I'm simply taking that gift, all right, and actuating it, using it now, and embracing Christ as Lord and Savior.

So Arminian friends need to be reminded that we love them enough to share these truths with them to hopefully get them to see the fullness of grace. Oh, I would affirm as an Arminian, all right, that I'm saved by grace alone, through faith alone, and Christ alone, but not with the full understanding.

So in addition to loving our neighbors with the gospel, we need to also love Arminian friends with the gospel as well by reminding them of what grace really is. It has nothing to do with you. In fact, you shouldn't be praying for your unsaved friends if you really believe that man has an absolute free will.

Now, in terms of scripture, we're going to go through many texts at this point, and I'm gonna conclude in three major text areas. And in order, that'll be John chapter six, Ephesians one, pardon, Romans nine, and then Ephesians one.

Before I get there, though, I wanna start in the Old Testament and work our way through, establishing a solid scriptural rubric for the unconditional election doctrine that we just talked about, which intensifies our understanding of God's love for us, that gives us the clear identity of belonging to him forever and his family, that produces in us godly behavior, that gives us the motive to properly serve and sacrifice for God and others, that also motivates us to embrace the gospel, that gives us a boldness to proclaim the gospel, knowing that God has a people, like we learn in Acts 18, even if we don't see them right away, there are a people that he is preparing for salvation, that keeps us humble because we recognize that this is not something, A, that we contrived or that we deserve, that gives us compassion, kindness, and a moral impetus for forgiveness.

Freely we've been forgiven, now freely we want to forgive others. And as we go into the Old Testament now, I want to draw your attention to the book of Deuteronomy, where we see God establishing a pattern of choosing, of electing, of favoring.

Again, since we're dead, since we already rejected Christ in the Garden of Eden, we have to remove the constant canard, the tired canard from those in the body or others who would say, this is not fair, this is not fair.

God is playing, God doesn't play favorites. No, he doesn't have favorites amongst those he's chosen, that's true. Okay, but he's given equal, he hasn't given equal amounts of grace, right? He's given some more grace, some amounts of more serving grace than others.

Equal in terms of salvation, yes, but some have different gifts than others, right? Some are gonna be a 30-fold, some will be a 60-fold, some will be a 100-fold, but again, let's get that out of the way right away because that's a huge mountain we have to make sure we go over before we embrace this truth.

So in Deuteronomy 7, right, it says the Lord God, verse six, has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession. Out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth, it was not because you were more in number than any of the people that the Lord set his love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples.

Now here he's speaking about his elect people in the old covenant, the Jews. The Israelites or the Jews, going back to Genesis 12, did not seek after God. Abram, it does not say, was there seeking after the Lord, was conjuring up faith.

No, it says that God spoke to Abram. Simple, very simple. God came to Abram first and then told him to leave his nation and go to the land that he was to inhabit. God takes the initiative in salvation by necessity.

The Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery and from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. All right, why? Because it is in verse 8a, it says, because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath he swore to your fathers.

Again, you see that that love here is selective, right? So in this text in Deuteronomy 7, 6 -8, you see that God's love on his people is selective to the point where he brings them into relationship with himself and it manifests in blessings.

Follow this thought now as we go through some other Old Testament references. Deuteronomy 14, 2, he says, for you are a holy people to the Lord your God and the Lord has chosen you to be a people for his own possession out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.

Again, fairness is not an issue. A dead humanity that's already rejected Christ in the garden. Remember, we all sin, Romans 5, 12, all have sinned in Adam. So we all made a choice in Adam to reject Christ.

That's why babies sometimes die because they've already rejected Christ. They brought the sinful nature upon themselves. The wages of sin is death. So again, that is going out of the way, this idea of it not being fair.

And we see, again, as we go through scripture that God is watching over his people to the point where he's going to prophesy some amazing things in Ezekiel. In Ezekiel 36, if you go there now, you're gonna see an amazing reference to God actually promising to take a rebellious people just because God chooses us and himself does not guarantee that we're going to always respond to that elective love.

Because truly now we have a free will. It's only in Christ that our will has been liberated. And the Israelites who were truly regenerated, just like people in the new covenant that are regenerated, still have, I'm sorry, now for the first time, have a free will in the sense that they can actually make choices to disobey or obey God.

So whether they are regenerate or not, in terms of the Old Testament economy of grace, we find that God is actually going to move in their midst to bring them back out of their rebelliousness because of the choices they made to sin against them.

So in Ezekiel 36, starting in verse number 26, moreover, I'll give you a new heart and put a new spirit with you. And I will remove your heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. I'll put my spirit within you and cause you to walk in my statutes.

And you will be careful to observe my ordinances. Moreover, I will save you from all your uncleanness and I will call for the grain and multiply and I'll not bring a famine on you. I'll multiply the fruit of the tree and produce produce of the field so that you will not receive again the disgrace of famine among the nations.

Then you will remember your evil ways and your deeds that were not good and you will loathe yourselves in your own sight for your iniquities and your abominations. I'm not doing this for your sake, declares the Lord your God.

Let it be known to you. Be ashamed and confounded of your ways, oh Israel. See, again, it's not for their sake. They're not deserving of it at all. This love, this grace, which again, can't be separated.

Just like you can't separate faith and love. You can't separate faith and works either. If you have one, the other will fall out of necessity. God is going to do this even amongst rebellious Israel as an example of his unconditional election.

And he goes on and he says in verse 33, on the day that I cleanse you from all your iniquities, I will cause the cities to be inhabited and waste places to be rebuilt. Now, I'm not gonna, for sake of time, go through the rest of the chapter, but suffice to say that both here and as we go into Ezekiel 37, he's gonna marry his election with blessings.

The blessings of the land, the blessings of a restored community, which in chapter 37 becomes very clear that ultimately it's talking about heaven. To take this in a premillennial sense is quite difficult.

We're not gonna go there, but really this is ultimately, because we're gonna see at the end of 37, this is forever. And this earth, we know it does not last forever. That's really talking about heaven.

The covenant blessing will be fully manifested in heaven. This covenant blessing of God's election in himself will come to pass completely. As we jump over to Ezekiel 37 now, we find out that it comes with material blessings as well.

Pardon me. And he says in chapter 37, verse 21, he says,. Thus says the Lord God, behold, I will take the sons of Israel from among the nations where they have gone and I will gather them from every side and bring them into their own land.

Let's stop here for a second and remind ourselves that Romans 9 .6, Paul tells us that not all of Israel is Israel, right? So there is an elect people within the general community, just like in the church, you have the visible church, the invisible church, the invisible church, or the truly born again believer, okay?

So God is ultimately gonna bring into one new body and manifest it in heaven who the true believers are. Even though here on earth, there'll be a mixture. Not everyone who says to me, Lord, Lord, shall inherit the kingdom of heaven.

Jesus told us, right? But you'll see here that God is going to do something unconditionally. Watch what he says, continuing in verse 22. And I will make them one nation in the land on the mountains of Israel and one king will be their king for all of them.

And they will no longer be two nations and no longer be divided into two kingdoms. They will no longer defile themselves with their idols or the detestable things or any of their transgressions. And I will deliver them from all their dwelling places in which they have sinned and will cleanse them.

And they will be my people and I will be their God. Notice it's I, I, I. God is the subject. God is the very essence of why this is happening.

It's not because they deserve it,.

Not because they earned it. It's unconditional. God is going to do this. This is an absolute promise. And my servant David, that's Jesus here in the context, will be king over them. And they will have one shepherd and they'll walk on my ordinances and keep my statutes and observe them.

And they will live in the land that I gave to my Jacob, my servant, in which your fathers live and they will live on it. And they are their sons and their sons forever. This is speaking of heaven. David, my servant, will be their prince forever.

So God's going to take his invisible church, the true people of God. He's going to take the true Israelite, the true Jew, as Paul says in Romans 2, is the one circumcised inwardly. How can you circumcise your heart?

Try doing that sometime. Only God can do that, right? Okay, as Paul says in Philippians 3, who is the true Israel? Who's the true Jew, by extension? Those who worship Jesus by the power of the Holy Spirit.

So God's going to reformulate the church. Ultimately, he's going to reformulate both Jew and Gentile and Christ. That is what the church is today, right? Those who truly know him will be assembled in heaven.

As he says in verse 26, I'll make a covenant of peace with them. It'll be an everlasting covenant with them. And I will place them and multiply them and will set my sanctuary in their midst forever. My dwelling place also will be with them and I will be their God and they will be my people.

And the nations will know that I am the Lord who sanctifies Israel when my sanctuary is in the midst forever. So ultimately, this is going to be fulfilled in heaven when everybody will see, even as they say that Jesus is Lord, right?

Because every tongue will confess that he's Lord. But the separation of the sheep and the goats is not going to be based upon work. It's going to be based upon our knowledge of Christ. Depart from me, Jesus says, I never what?

Knew you. Depart from me, I never had a relationship with you. Depart from me, I never chose you. The choosing of God, the election of God, the knowledge of God are all by necessity, really one concept when it comes to our identity and our future in the kingdom of God, where it's fully manifested as you see here in heaven.

But notice, it is God that is doing all the work. It is God that is the one pruning and clipping away all the dead branches off the tree. He's the one that's separating the sheep and the goats. And of course, the sheep are going to do good works, as Jesus mentioned in Matthew 25, out of necessity, because if there's true saving faith, if there's true election, why?