Election and the Thessalonians

We are working our way through 1 Thessalonians to show how inmillennialism affects our understanding of Paul’s words. My last two posts introduced the fact that he has re-thought three elements of Jewish theology: monotheism, election, and eschatology.¹ This change appears in his salutation. Last week’s post (here) discussed how Paul uses the term “church” in a new way (1 Thess 1:1). In the Mosaic age—from the Exodus to the temple’s fall in AD 70—Israel after the flesh (cf. 1 Cor 10:18) comprised the congregation of God. Now, in the messianic age—from the first coming of Christ to the resurrection—the assembly of God comprises another kind of Jew (e.g., Rom 2:28–29). 

In this post, I want to show that Paul has made a similar shift regarding the overarching idea of election. (By “overarching” I mean that Israel as the “elect” includes Israel as the “church.”) The Apostle says:

We give thanks to God always for you all, making mention of you in our prayers; Remembering without ceasing your work of faith, and labour of love, and patience of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ, in the sight of God and our Father; Knowing, brethren beloved, your election of God. For our gospel came not unto you in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance; as ye know what manner of men we were among you for your sake. (1 Thess 1:2–5)

He does so in his second letter, too:

We are bound to give thanks alway to God for you, brethren beloved of the Lord, because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth: whereunto he called you by our gospel, to the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Thess 2:13–14)

Paul’s application of election to someone other than Israel after the flesh (1 Cor 10:18) provoked a vehement reaction in many of the Jews (cf. Acts 17:5). The reason for this reaction is easy to understand.

Old Testament Election

The Jews had considered themselves to be God’s elect nation to the exclusion of all others for sixteen hundred years.² Moses had explained God’s choice of them during the Exodus:

Thou art an holy people unto the LORD thy God: the LORD thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself, above all people that are upon the face of the earth. The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: but because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, hath the LORD brought you out with a mighty hand, and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt. Know therefore that the LORD thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations; and repayeth them that hate him to their face, to destroy them: he will not be slack to him that hateth him, he will repay him to his face. Thou shalt therefore keep the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments, which I command thee this day, to do them. (Deut 7:6–11)

Israel’s worship of God rested on the fact that he had chosen them; they were his elect nation.³

Moses’ explanation of God’s election of Israel contained four elements. First, it showed the time of election—“the LORD thy God hath chosen thee” (Deut 7:6). Moses was speaking to the nation after God had redeemed them from Egypt and had then given the law to them. But God’s election of Israel predated these events. Four centuries earlier,⁴ God had revealed to Abraham that these things would happen (Gen 15:13–14; cf. Exod 12:40–41; Gal 3:17). Even then, God viewed the nation in prospect and told Abraham that he would deliver them from Egypt. But we can go even further back in time. God says: “I am the LORD, I change not; therefore ye sons of Jacob are not consumed” (Mal 3:6). We can infer, therefore, that God chose Israel in eternity past and determined to redeem them and to give the law to them.

Second, Moses stressed the cause of election in both negative and positive terms: “The LORD did not set his love upon you, nor choose you, because ye were more in number than any people; for ye were the fewest of all people: but because the LORD loved you, and because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers” (Deut 7:7–8). Negatively, Israel did nothing to influence God’s choice of her; neither did some inherent characteristic cause God to choose her. Positively, Moses explains the basis of election: it was “because the LORD loved you.” The revealed cause of Israel’s election was the love of God—nothing more, nothing less.

Third, Moses showed the results of election (Deut 7:9–10): God would continue to be faithful to his covenant for “a thousand generations.” We should not quibble about a literal “thousand” here—this term means God will forever be faithful to his covenant with Israel. They will endure as long as they “love him and keep his commandments.” As for God’s enemies, he will repay “them that hate him to their face.” Election ensures the preservation of the people who obey God even as the non-elect and disobedient suffer destruction.

The blessings of election pertain to both the nation as a whole and to individuals within it. Five centuries after Moses,⁵ Samuel used election to comfort the nation: “The LORD will not forsake his people for his great name’s sake: because it hath pleased the LORD to make you his people” (1 Sam 12:22). And David applies the blessings of election to individuals: “Blessed is the man whom thou choosest, and causest to approach unto thee, that he may dwell in thy courts: we shall be satisfied with the goodness of thy house, even of thy holy temple” (Ps 65:4). The scriptural doctrine of election has both a corporate and an individual aspect.

Fourth, Moses declared the proper response to election (Deut 7:11): “Thou shalt therefore keep the commandments, and the statutes, and the judgments, which I command thee this day, to do them.” Moses repeats this theme a short time later: 

Behold, the heaven and the heaven of heavens is the LORD’S thy God, the earth also, with all that therein is. Only the LORD had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and he chose their seed after them, even you above all people, as it is this day. Circumcise therefore the foreskin of your heart, and be no more stiffnecked. (Deut 10:14–16)

God meant for his election of Israel to produce holiness in the lives of his people.

Before leaving the Old Testament, I want to stress that Israel was God’s elect nation in the Mosaic age based on fleshly descent—God loved the “fathers, therefore He chose their descendants after them” (Deut 4:37 NKJV). Without natural progeny, there would be no elect nation in the Mosaic age.

New Testament Election

The Jew’s powerful reaction to Paul’s preaching is understandable. He and the other apostles had reworked their understanding of election. In their thinking, every element of election now applies to another nation.

I will first show that there is another nation. Jesus spoke of it while addressing the Jews: “The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof” (Matt 21:43). Peter also speaks of it when writing to Christians: “Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people” (1 Pet 2:9). This nation was “elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father” (1 Pet 1:2). In the New Testament, God has a chosen nation, but it is not Israel after the flesh as it was in the Old Testament.

The leading characteristics of New Testament election are the same as those Moses listed. First, the timing of election is the same: Paul says, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ: according as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:3–4). He also says God “saved us, and called us with an holy calling … according to his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began” (2 Tim 1:9).

Second, the cause of election is identical. Negatively, it has nothing to do with those whom God chooses. According to Paul, God “saved us, and called us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to his own purpose and grace” (2 Tim 1:9). Paul stresses that New Testament election “is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Rom 9:16). Positively, the Apostle attributes election to one thing—the love of God: “God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved)” (Eph 2:4–5).

Third, the results of election are sure in the New Testament just as they were in the Old Testament. Paul says that God will glorify every person he chooses:

We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose. For whom he did foreknow, he also did predestinate to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brethren. Moreover whom he did predestinate, them he also called: and whom he called, them he also justified: and whom he justified, them he also glorified.… Who shall lay any thing to the charge of God’s elect? (Rom 8:28–30, 33)

The blessings of election pertain corporately to the “holy nation” (1 Pet 1:2; 2:9) and individually to persons whose names God wrote “in the book of life from the foundation of the world” (Rev 17:8).

Fourth, election in the New Testament produces the same response that it did in the Old Testament—love and obedience to God. Peter says: 

Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people; that ye should shew forth the praises of him who hath called you out of darkness into his marvellous light: which in time past were not a people, but are now the people of God: which had not obtained mercy, but now have obtained mercy. (1 Pet 2:9–10)

After telling the church at Ephesus that God has “hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world” (Eph 1:4), Paul says, “We are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them” (Eph 2:10).

Conclusion

Paul has re-thought two key terms in his Jewish theology—“church” and “election.” He formerly reserved both for Israel after the flesh (1 Cor 10:18) but now applies them to the Thessalonians without fanfare and after having spent only a few weeks reasoning “with them out of the scriptures” (Acts 17:2). 

In my next post, I want to consider the principles Paul may have used to teach them about such weighty doctrines in such a short amount of time.

1. As advocated by N. T. Wright, Paul and the Faithfulness of God, vol. 4 of Christian Origins and the Question of God (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2013), 46 (emphasis added).
2. Martin Anstey, Chronology of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1973), 160.
3. The image in this post is Moses Pleading with Israel, as in Deuteronomy 6:1-15, an illustration from a Bible card published 1907 by the Providence Lithograph Company. This file (here) is in the public domain (PD-US).
4. Anstey, Chronology of the Old Testament, 157, 160.
5. Anstey, Chronology of the Old Testament, 160, 180.