"according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ: Grace to you and peace be multiplied."
The election here was not UNconditional apart from sanctification and obedience.
Sanctification is not something that happens unconditionally, randomly only to certain people, it does not happen miraculously, against one's will or apart from the word of God. Sanctification occurs by the word of God. John 17:17, those who obey that word are the ones sanctified.
2 Thessalonians 2:13 "because God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth"
Note there are CONDITIONS to be of the "chosen" and man must met the condition of believing the truth. So those who believe the word of God and obey it thereby sanctified by the SPirit make up the chosen. "..notice that those who are said to have been "chosen" had an obligation to believe the truth. They ended up "chosen" because they chose to accept God's invitation ( Mat_22:14 )." Dunagan's Comm.
Obedience, there is no salvation apart from man's obedience to God's will, so man has a role to play in his own election, in being of God's chosen.
God does not work against one's will, He does not strive with the flesh.
God makes people born again, and their will is changed as their very nature is changed.
The old enmity is gone then and everything is become new in the relationship.
Unless your born again you will never 'see' the kingdom of God, as in perceive, comprehend, or want anything to do with it, and Christ, so you will never believe unless born again first.
Now in the Old Covenant times, like with Israel, God strove with their flesh and it was a failure, it had faults. They continually rebelled, so this NC works different in the God makes people born again. You, Bass, are like living and teaching and believing from the OC perspective, do this, do that, dont do that, must teach people to know God, trying to force compliance with the ways of God. God simply dispenses with all of that in the NC, for by grace (not faith by itself, that grace comes first and that grace God manifests in you by making you born again first as an act of God) you have been saved.
example of OC problems
Romans 10:20-21 New King James Version,
v20 is how the NC works.
20 But Isaiah is very bold and says:
“I was found by those who did not seek Me;
I was made manifest to those who did not ask for Me.”
21 But to Israel he says: is how the OC works
“All day long I have stretched out My hands
To a disobedient and contrary people.”
Hebrews 8, lots of people talk about the sin and sacrifice change in the NC, but they miss the part how God writes His laws on their hearts, and PUTS His laws into their minds, which is how it works so much better. He can only do that by making people born again FIRST, so they can believe at all. So yeah the NC is invasive against the natural antagonistic will of a man in that it does that removing the enmity man has against Christ.
A New Covenant
7
For if that first covenant had been faultless, then no place would have been sought for a second. 8 Because finding fault with them, He says: “Behold, the days are coming, says the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah— 9 not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day when I took them by the hand to lead them out of the land of Egypt; because they did not continue in My covenant, and I disregarded them, says the Lord.
10 For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My laws in their mind and write them on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people. 11 None of them shall teach his neighbor, and none his brother, saying, ‘Know the Lord,’ for all shall know Me, from the least of them to the greatest of them. 12 For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their lawless deeds I will remember no more.”
13 In that He says, “A new covenant,” He has made the first obsolete. Now what is becoming obsolete and growing old is ready to vanish away.
