II Peter 1:10, “Therefore, brethren, be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you…”

Scripture talks a lot about God’s election; God’s choosing before the foundation of the world who would be His and experience His salvation. I’m not a Calvinist, but this aspect of Calvin’s teaching I agree with, that God chose every individual who would be saved, or as it’s pictured in Revelation, our names were written in the book of life before the foundation of the world (Revelation 13:8; 17:8 ). But I strongly disagree with the idea that salvation has nothing to do with our choices. God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34). And listen to what I Peter 1:1 says about the basis on which God made His choice: “To those… who are chosen according to the foreknowledge of God the Father”. God either chose or didn’t choose you based on His foreknowledge of the kind of person you’d be and the sort of choices you’d make. So don’t make the mistake of some people when they hear that God has chosen who will be His and think, “Oh, well then why bother to try and follow Jesus, if God’s already decided whether or not I’ll be saved? If He chose me, then I’ll be saved. If He didn’t, then I can’t be. Why should I do anything? God’s already decided.” Because when God made His choice back then He based it on what you are choosing now. It’s a mind buster, but I believe it’s Scripture’s teaching. We are choosing right now, whether He chose us back then, because He foreknew what we’d be choosing now.

So Peter says here, “be all the more diligent to make certain about His calling and choosing you”. You do that by making every effort to develop the qualities and behaviors of II Peter 1:5-7. By working on developing the character of Jesus with the help of the Holy Spirit, we make His calling and choosing of us certain.

– James Williams