“You did not choose Me but I chose you, and appointed you…” (John 15:16).
We often make much of our choices and our own wills in the wrong way. Rather than focus on the choices we have made, ought not we to focus on the choice that Jesus Christ has made? Regarding our will, isn’t the critical thing about our will that we surrender it to Jesus Christ?
We are hardly independent autonomous agents, we are either dead in trespasses and sins, or we are alive in Christ, and if we are alive in Christ it is because He has called us from the dead as He called Lazarus from the dead (see Ephesians 2:1 – 10). We are either slaves to sin and unrighteousness or we are slaves to righteousness and holiness in Jesus Christ (see Romans Chapter 6).
If we have made a choice to follow Jesus, it is only because He first chose us to follow Him and enabled our choice as He enables our obedient following. Therefore Jesus makes the clear statement, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you.”
Earlier in the Gospel of John, Jesus says, “No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day” (6:44). Paul writes of the assurance that “He who began a good work in you will perfect it until the day of Jesus Christ” (Phil. 1:6). The writer of Hebrews tells us that Jesus is the “Author and Finisher of our faith” (Heb. 12:2). What Jesus begins, Jesus completes, bringing it to maturity and perfection.
O dear brothers, if the primary choice is ours, then we can doubt our choice; but if the choice is that of Jesus Christ, who can doubt the choice of God?
If the choice is ours, then the foundation of our faith rests upon ourselves, and if it rests upon ourselves it rests upon that which is changeable and mutable, subject to the vicissitudes of life. Ah, but if Jesus chose us, if the choice is His, then our foundation is the immutable God, the God who is the same yesterday, today, and forever. No matter how the structure of the building may be battered by the storms of life, it will remain because it rests upon a sure foundation.
If the choice is ours, then we must be preoccupied with ourselves for if our beginning is of ourselves, then the working out and completion rests upon ourselves. O but if the choice belongs to Jesus, then we can trust Him to work within us for our perfection and maturity and we can focus on Him and on being a blessing to others (Phil. 2:13).
Does this not bring us back to the Vine and the branches? (John 15:1–8). We are, in fact, still in the same passage, and what we read in verse 16 flows from what we read in verses 1 – 8. Without Jesus we can do nothing! (15:4–5).
When we learn to live in the security of knowing that Jesus chose us and we did not choose Him, we can lay our lives down for the brethren. When we know the security of living in Jesus Christ, we can face persecution and pressure; consider that the very next section of the Upper Room deals with pressure, opposition, and persecution (15:18–16:4). Insecure people tend to cave into peer pressure, secure people tend to stand firm. Insecure people look to themselves and their own resources, secure disciples in Christ look to Him and His care for them, overcoming by confessing Jesus and living in Him as He lives in them (Rev. 12:11; 1 John 4:4).
A realization that what Jesus Christ began He will finish, a realization that we are His friends, that He chose us, does not, as the uninformed allege, give us license to do what we want, but rather makes us bondservants of Jesus Christ, for we realize that we have been bought with a price, the blood of the Lamb.
To hear the Voice of Jesus Christ in the Upper Room is to hear the call of Jesus to live in Him and to participate in Him in His life in the Father. To realize that Jesus chose us and we did not choose Him, allows us to hear His call to live in Him in His betrayal, torture, crucifixion, bearing the sorrows of others, in His resurrection and ascension, and in His sitting at the Father’s right hand. We can wash the feet even of our betrayer when we are secure in Jesus Christ.
The response to “If anyone will come after Me” (Mark 8:34) is a response to the choice of Jesus Christ, to have an ear to hear this call is a gift of God, to respond to this call is a gift from God, to be faithful to this call is a work of God.
The disciples in the Upper Room may have thought that they chose Jesus, but Jesus wanted there to be no misunderstanding about who initiated the relationship, and so He says, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you.”
I imagine there was no argument about the statement. I imagine that when they heard it that the disciples looked at one another and, after a moment or two, said to one another, “You know, He’s right.”
Can anyone, in whom the True and Living God is doing a work of grace and salvation, ever attribute to himself the least amount of credit and glory? Can anyone who has been drawn into the koinonia of the Trinity ever look God in the eye and say, “I am here because of me, not because of You”?
“But by His [God’s] doing you are in Christ Jesus, who became to us wisdom from God, and righteousness and sanctification, and redemption, so that, just as it is written, “Let him who boasts, boast in the Lord” (1 Cor. 1:30–31).
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