Deuteronomy 7:7The LORD did not set his love on you, nor choose you, because you were more in number than any people; for you were the fewest of all peoples.
Did God choose Israel because she deserved it? If not, why did He choose her?
Ephesians 2:11, 12
11Therefore remember that formerly you, the Gentiles in the flesh, who are called “Uncircumcision” by the so-called “Circumcision,”
which is performed in the flesh by human hands—
12remember that you were at that time separate from Christ, excluded from the commonwealth of Israel, and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.
Did God include Gentiles because they deserved it? If not, why did He include them?
This is true. The waters only become muddied when someone takes it a step further and insists that we are saved BY those works of charity and/or obedience, in whole or in part.
God's one reason for revealing Himself to Israel and choosing them to be His holy people was because of love.
The Gentiles lacked knowledge of the One, true God, worshipped false gods, and they had no hope of salvation because they did not have the messianic expectation promised by the prophets. But through Christ Jesus all these barriers between Jews and Gentiles have been transcended (verses 13-14) by Jesus' fulfillment of the cultic rituals of the old
Mosaic Law like circumcision, dietary requirements, and animal sacrifice (verse 15). Christ, "our peace" (verse 14) has brought us the spiritual peace of being reconciled with God the Father (
Jn 14:27;
Rom 5:1). In Christ Jews (the circumcised) and Gentiles (the uncircumcised) are united into a single religious community (verses 15-16), and imbued with the same Holy Spirit they worship the same God and Father.
I see the "things we believe" and "the things we do" as different sides of the same coin called faith.
It's both/and though, not either/or. God calls us; He offers us faith so to speak; He gives us the reason (truths to believe in) and means and power to believe but we can nevertheless refuse His calling. So grace leads to more grace, depending on how or whether we receive it. We respond to the gift of grace, to God, by believing, and that introduces us into a life of grace.
But, yes, faith is our first act, and it's important to emphasize that it's a free act even as God helps us to make it.
Some may see my words who are among the Roman Catholics or some other groups as an acceptance of their doctrine. But nothing could be further from the truth I quote a man I believe that comes close to what I have been saying ,
“As many as resist not this Light, but receive the same, it becomes in them a holy, pure, and spiritual birth, bringing forth holiness, righteousness, purity, and all those other blessed fruits, which are acceptable to God, by which holy birth, to wit,
Jesus Christ formed within us, and working his works
in us, as we are sanctified, so are we justified in the sight of God, according to the apostle's words: "But ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God" (1 Cor. 6:11). Therefore it is not by our works wrought in our will, nor yet by good works, considered as of themselves; but by
Christ, who is both the
gift and the
giver, and the cause producing the effects
in us, who, as he hath reconciled us while we were enemies, doth also in his wisdom save us, and justify us after this manner, as saith the same apostle elsewhere, "According to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and the renewing of the Holy Ghost" (Tit. 3:5).”
And
“For the
Papists, they say they obtain remission of sins, and are justified by the merits of Christ, as the same are applied unto them in the use of the sacraments of the church, and are dispensed in the performance of such and such ceremonies, pilgrimages, prayers, and performances, though there be not any inward renewing of the mind, nor knowing of Christ inwardly formed; yet they are remitted and made righteous
ex opere operato, because of the power and authority accompanying the sacraments and the dispensers of them.
The
Protestants say that they obtain remission of sins, and stand justified in the sight of God by virtue of the merits and sufferings of Christ, not by infusing righteousness into them, but bypardoning their sins, and by accounting and accepting their persons as righteous: they resting on him, and his righteousness by faith; which faith, the act of believing, is not imputed unto them for righteousness.
So the justification of neither here is placed in any inward renewing of the mind, or by virtue of any spiritual birth or formation of Christ
in them; but only by a bare application of the death and sufferings of Christ outwardly performed for them: whereof the one lays hold on a faith resting upon them, and hoping to be justified by them alone; the other by the saying of some outward prayers and ceremonies, which they judge makes the death of Christ effectual unto them. I except here (being unwilling to wrong any) what things have been said as to the necessity of inward holiness, either by some modern Papists, or some modern Protestants, who insofar as they have laboured after a midst betwixt these two extremes, have come near to the Truth, as by some citations out of them, hereafter to be mentioned, will appear; though this doctrine hath not, since the apostasy, so far as ever I could observe, been so distinctly and evidently held forth according to the Scripture's testimony, as it hath pleased God to reveal it and preach it forth in this day by the witnesses of his Truth whom he hath raised to that end; which doctrine, though it be briefly held forth and comprehended in the thesis itself, yet I shall a little more fully explain the state of the controversy as it stands betwixt us and those that now oppose us.
§III. First then, as by the explanation of the former thesis appears, we renounce all natural power and ability in ourselves, in order to bring us out of our lost and fallen condition and first nature; and confess that as of ourselves we are able to do nothing that is good: so neither can we procure remission of sins or justification by any act of our own so as to merit it or draw it as a debt from God due unto us, but we acknowledge all to be
of and
from his
love, which is the original and fundamental cause of our acceptance.
Secondly, God manifested this love towards us in the sending of his beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, into the world, who gave himself for us an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour; and having made peace through the blood of his cross, that he might reconcile us unto himself, and by the Eternal Spirit offered himself without spot unto God, and suffered for our sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us unto God.
Thirdly then, forasmuch as all men who have come to man's estate (the man Jesus only excepted) have sinned, therefore all have need of this Saviour, to remove the wrath of God from them, due to their offences; in this respect, he is truly said to have "borne the iniquities of us all in his body on the tree," and therefore is the only Mediator, having qualified the wrath of God towards us; so that our former sins stand not in our way, being by virtue of his most satisfactory sacrifice, removed and pardoned. Neither do we think that remission of sins is to be expected, sought, or obtained any other way, or by any works or sacrifice whatsoever (though, as has been said formerly, they may come to partake of this remission that are ignorant of the history). So then Christ by his death and sufferings hath reconciled us to God, even while we are enemies, that is, he offers reconciliation unto us, we are put into a capacity of being reconciled, God is willing to forgive us our iniquities and to accept us, as is well expressed by the apostle (2 Cor. 5:19): "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them, and hath put in us the word of reconciliation." And therefore the apostle, in the next verses, entreats them "in Christ's stead to be reconciled to God"; intimating, that the wrath of God being removed by the obedience of Christ Jesus, he is willing to be reconciled unto them, and ready to remit the sins that are past, if they repent.
We consider then our redemption in a two-fold respect or state, both which in their own nature are perfect though in their application to us the one is not, nor cannot be, without respect to the other.
The first is the redemption performed and accomplished by Christ
for us in his crucified body without us. The other is the redemption wrought by Christ
in us, which no less properly is called and accounted a redemption than the former. The first then is that whereby man, as he stands in the fall, is put into a capacity of salvation, and hath conveyed unto him a measure of that power, virtue, spirit, life, and grace that was in Christ Jesus: which, as the free gift of God, is able to counterbalance, overcome, and root out the evil seed wherewith we are naturally as in the fall, leavened.
The second is that whereby we witness and know this pure and perfect redemption
in ourselves, purifying, cleansing, and redeeming us from the power of corruption, and bringing us into unity, favour, and friendship with God.”