Joel M Bradshaw

6“For you are a people holy to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth.—Deuteronomy 7

You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. (John 15:16)

Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ. For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. (Ephesians 1:3-4)

1. There is a sense where this once applied exclusively to national Israel.
2. Jesus also exclusively chose His apostles. in all three verses God is the chooser, not man. On our own and in our own power, we will NEVER naturally choose God.
3. Also chronologically and theologically, Ephesians 1 was is BEFORE Genesis 1.
4. Therefore I tend to view being chosen by God not in an ethnic or national way, but through being a follower of Jesus.
5. Jesus for me is the better biblical filter for my understanding.—JMB