for God shows no partiality. [romans 2:11]
maybe you have heard the phrase “God is no respecter of persons” and there are a couple of passages where that idea is from: in the KJV, romans 2:11 is rendered-”for there is no respect of persons with God.”, and acts 10:34b states that “of a truth i perceive that God is no respecter of persons:” what a foreign concept in our time and place. in our culture, the person and their value is measured in how rich they are, how attractive they are, how many followers they have, and how productive they are.
we are trained from an early age to have self-esteem, the culture believes that the lack of it is the root of all types of self-destructive behaviors. we are told that we are to be self-determining, self-loving, self-caring, self-striving people and that rugged individualism is of paramount value, but these ideas aren’t biblical at all. what gives us value is not our distinctives, our wealth, our race or our family of origin. what does give us value is what we are unified by: that Christ died for those whom God chose. God does not choose us because of how smart or attractive we are, he chooses us because he chooses us–he is free to do whatever he pleases–
our God is in the heavens;
he does all that he pleases. [psalm 115:3]
this us a hard truth for us to grasp–that God sovereignly chooses some, and not others solely for his own glory–and he does it prior to any action that we can take any way we could earn respect, position and wealth–before our birth, before the foundation of the world:
blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. in love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. [ephesians 1:3-6]
there is no action we could do to merit our salvation, he chose us because he is free to choose us and set his grace upon us. he loves us because he is free to love us. nothing controls him, nothing compels him but his own glory, he shows no partiality, he is no respecter of persons.
knowing your identity should produce confidence–not in personal self worth, but in the surpassing worth of knowing Jesus Christ as our Lord (philippians 3:8) we could lose everything, and still have everything in Jesus. knowledge of who we are in Christ is the pride-killer, it causes us to know that we did not do anything to merit our salvation. he did not respect our position or accomplishments, God simply loved whom he loved and sent his Son to redeem a group of people who had no way to earn their way into his presence.
know yourself chosen in this way, if he respected you, you would still be striving and earning your place, and no matter how hard you worked, you would never earn his presence.
rest in him, thank him for the glorious gift of his impartial, choosing love that he showed through his own Son, Jesus Christ.
~ce