THE LORD CHOOSES HIS BRIDE

J.C. Philpot

“YE have not chosen Me, but I HAVE CHOSEN YOU!” [John 15:16]

These words, spoken by preacher J. C. Philpot many years ago, were addressed to those who opposed God’s sovereign election of some sinners unto salvation in Christ before the world was made:

“Now let me ask you the following questions. May you choose your own house, or must another choose it for you? “Well,” you say, “I certainly think I have a right to choose my own house: nobody can know what sort of a house I want so well as myself.” Do you think that anybody may choose for you your friends, associates and companions? “No,” you answer. “I think I ought to have liberty to choose my own friends and companions, or those chosen for me might be very disagreeable or unsuitable associates.” Do you think anybody has a right, if you are unmarried, to fix upon a wife for you and say, “You must take this woman for your partner in life, whether you like her or not?” “No,” you say. “I think it is part of our liberty as men to choose our own wives.”

Now apply my figures to the point in hand. May not God upon similar grounds choose His own house? Is not the church God’s house the temple in which He dwells; and has Has He not a perfect right to choose His own habitation? Do we not read, “The LORD hath chosen Zion; He hath desired it for His habitation?” Had He not a right to choose Zion rather than Sinai, and inhabit Jerusalem rather than Samaria? Had not Christ a right to choose His friends and companions for all eternity? Had He a right, for instance, to choose His own disciples? Should you think it right that our Lord should not have had any will in the matter to choose Peter, John and James? Does not the very idea shock your mind and chill your blood?

Yet you are not shocked nor does your blood run cold when you say it is unjust if the Lord has a choice of His own in salvation. And had not the Lord a perfect right to choose His own bride, His own spouse? So if you as a man are at liberty to choose your own house, your own associates, your own wife, [then] do allow the Lord as much liberty in eternal matters as you claim for yourself in temporal.