Does God Save the Choicest?

In His Sermon on the Mount, Christ sets the bar for righteousness very high – above that of the Pharisees! Nobody can attain the standard Jesus set in His sermon. Rather than an exhortation to attain righteousness, it is an explanation of our failure and our doom.

The Pharisee at prayer brought God his own good deeds. We all agree he was a fine fellow, and yet Jesus says, at the end of the day, the Pharisee went home still condemned.

In reality, all our own works of righteousness are but filthy rags before an holy and righteous God.

Last week, an heretical Southern Baptist seminary teacher explained that, when the Scriptures say God "elects" or "chooses" His people whom He will save, what that really means is that we are "choice" – like the "choice meat cuts" at the grocery store. In other words, God chooses us because we are "choice," that there is something in us that commends us to God to save us! This poor man is not far from Roman Catholicism in his false views on salvation.

The notion that we have qualities that make us "choice" subjects of salvation is rebutted by Paul in First Corinthians 1. In reality, God has chosen the foolish things, the weak things, the things that are nothing!

Instead of our being "the choice meat," in fact we are the ground round, the gristle, the bone! We are fit for the meat scrap heap, perhaps to be turned into dog food.

God saves the worst! God saves poor, helpless sinners! He doesn't save us because we are likable or respectable or commendable. The reality is, we might imagine God asking Himself, can I save such a poor, vile, disobedient, helpless sinner? Why, yes I can, just watch Me and see!

Praise God, He does!