{"id":436,"date":"2018-11-05T16:31:16","date_gmt":"2018-11-05T22:31:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/?p=436"},"modified":"2018-11-05T16:31:16","modified_gmt":"2018-11-05T22:31:16","slug":"chosen-to-bear-fruit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2018\/11\/05\/chosen-to-bear-fruit\/","title":{"rendered":"Chosen to Bear Fruit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"Though it may at first seem counterintuitive, the most important Biblical text for understanding the Christian Gospel as St. Paul proclaims it is the book of Deuteronomy.\u00a0 The book of Deuteronomy sums up the Torah, the Pentateuch, in presenting the Prophet Moses’ great final sermon to the people of Israel before his death and their entrance into the land promised to their forefathers.\u00a0 It is, in condensed and pointed form, the covenant document granted by God to his people Israel.\u00a0 In the ancient world, the type of covenant document, ‘berith’ in Hebrew, which is represented in the Old Testament is a particular type of ancient suzerainty treaty.\u00a0 When a king conquered a new city or territory and took possession of it, or one king was compelled to surrender to another by other means, the defeated king became a vassal of the other, who became his suzerain.\u00a0 The suzerain would then issue such a covenant document to his vassal which would begin by describing the greatness of the suzerain and all that he had accomplished, particularly on behalf of the new vassal.\u00a0 It would then outline the responsibilities which the vassal had to the suzerain going forward and what the consequences would be should the vassal choose not to obey these obligations.\u00a0 The book of Deuteronomy as a whole follows precisely this format in communicating concerning God as king to his new vassal, the nation of Israel.<\/p>\n

In the previous post<\/a>, the relationship between election and inheritance was discussed.\u00a0 Israel was chosen by God to receive an inheritance and in the book of Joshua, following on Deuteronomy, Israel takes possession of it.\u00a0 Israel was chosen for this purely by God’s grace.\u00a0 He chose to work through Abraham and his descendants.\u00a0 He chose to treat Isaac as the firstborn for purposes of inheritance and Jacob even though he was the younger brother.\u00a0 He chose Israel out of all of the nations of the world for his own possession, to work in the world through them.\u00a0 Israel did not earn this status.\u00a0 God did not give them the law in Egypt and then, when they had kept it perfectly, bring them out of Egypt and give them the land.\u00a0 As Deuteronomy 9:4-6 says, “Do not say in your heart, after Yahweh your God has thrown them from your presence, ‘It is because of my righteousness that the Lord has brought me in to possess this land,’ rather it is because of the evil of these nations that Yahweh is driving them out from your presence.\u00a0 Not because of your righteousness or the straightness of your heart are you going in to inherit their land, but because of the evil of these nation Yahweh your God is driving them out from your presence, and that he may confirm the word that Yahweh swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.\u00a0 Therefore, know that Yahweh your God is not giving you this good land to inherit because of your righteousness, because you are a stiff-necked people.”\u00a0 This is the same language of righteousness and lack of a reason for boasting used by St. Paul in Galatians, Romans, and Ephesians.<\/p>\n

This concept also lies at the core of the dispute between Christ and the Pharisees.\u00a0 The Pharisees believed the God would act and the Messiah would come when Judea once again became completely obedient to the law.\u00a0 They would earn the restoration of their inheritance.\u00a0 This made tax collectors and sinners bitter enemies of the people who needed to be done away with, as they prevented the Messiah’s arrival and the restoration.\u00a0 Christ, in contrast, tells them that he came to seek and save the lost.\u00a0 He had come not to reward the righteous according to the law and condemn the wicked, but to reconcile the wicked through repentance and the forgiveness of sins.\u00a0 This is the core of the parable of the Prodigal Son, who has squandered his inheritance, but finds forgiveness when he repents and returns.\u00a0 This is also what lies behind the older brother and his bitterness.\u00a0 This is why Christ condemns the Pharisees for not truly understanding the Torah which was so precious to them.\u00a0 Their beliefs were never a part of its teaching.<\/p>\n

But this inheritance for which Israel is chosen is not the end of salvation, it is the beginning of salvation.\u00a0 God had chosen Israel so that the world would be saved through it.\u00a0 Israel itself would find salvation by fulfilling this calling for which they were specially chosen.\u00a0 The central portion of Deuteronomy, summarizing and explaining the law, was the description of how Israel would fulfill its calling.\u00a0 It described how they would live their lives as individuals, and as a community, in order to serve as a light to the nations which would draw all of the nations of the world to come and worship Yahweh, the God of Israel.\u00a0 St. Paul sees his own life in this context.\u00a0 He was known by God, and chosen from his mother’s womb (Gal 1:15), and called to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ to all the nations of the world.\u00a0 This is how he sees salvation also functioning in the lives of those who receive his epistles.\u00a0 St. Paul begins his epistles by proclaiming to the salvation which has come to Christians by the grace of God which they did not earn, for Christ died while we were still sinners.\u00a0 This is received by faith, by belief that the promises we have received from God are true.\u00a0 But this is the beginning, not the end of salvation.\u00a0 The Holy Spirit, received at baptism, is the down payment on our inheritance (Eph 1:14) and he comes with a call upon our lives.\u00a0 St. Paul continues, in each of his epistles, to describe how then we are to live, as individuals and in community, to accomplish the calling for which we have been chosen by God.<\/p>\n

Fulfilling this call is what makes our status as called and chosen by God actual, real, and effective.\u00a0 Just as being a physical descendant of Abraham was not enough in the Old Testament, so also having chosen and called status is not enough in the New Testament.\u00a0 St. Peter says, “His divine power has granted to us all things related to life and piety through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and virtue, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises….therefore make all effort to add to your faith with virtue, and virtue with knowledge, and knowledge with self-control, and self-control with endurance, and endurance with piety, and piety with the love of the brethren, and love of the brethren with love itself….be even more diligent to confirm your calling and election” (2 Pet 1:3-10).\u00a0 St. Paul states that for the elect to find salvation, something else must occur in their lives and his purpose in writing his epistles was to aid in this coming to pass (2 Tim 2:10).<\/p>\n

The product of a life lived as a Christian and lived in the community of the Church is compared biblically to fruit.\u00a0 Christ says, “You did not choose me but I chose you and appointed you in order that you might go and you might bear fruit and that your fruit might remain, in order that whatever you might ask the Father in my name he would give to you” (John 15:16).\u00a0 This same imagery is found throughout the New Testament as the description of a true Christian life and the purpose of the Church as a whole (Matt 3:8, 10; 7:17-19; 13:23; Mark 4:20, Luke 3:8-0; Luke 6:43; 8:15; 13:9; John 12:24; 15:2, 4-5, 8, 16; Rom 7:4-5; Col 1:6, 10).\u00a0 This imagery is not new in the New Testament.\u00a0 It was used in the Old Testament, beginning in Deuteronomy 29:18 in which a man, woman, clan, or tribe which turns away from Yahweh to follow the gods of the other nations is described as a root bearing poisonous and bitter fruit.\u00a0 It is then used prophetically throughout the remainder of the Old Testament to describe the remnant of Israel which will emerge in the last days which will, unlike Israel of old, bring forth fruit for God (2 Kgs 19:30; Ps 92:14; Prov 12:12; Is 11:1; 37:31; 45:8; Jer 17:8; Ezek 17:8, 23; 47:12; Hos 9:16; Joel 2:22; Mal 3:11).<\/p>\n

The close of Deuteronomy’s sermon describes the judgment that will come upon Israel.\u00a0 In Deuteronomy 28-30, death and life, blessings and curses, as set before Israel which will come upon them based on whether or not they fulfill their calling.\u00a0 If they follow the ways of the Lord and serve to bring salvation into the world and make it real in their own personal and communal lives, they will receives every good thing from God and their inheritance will increase and abide forever.\u00a0 If they turn away from Yahweh, their God, who has done all of these things for them, then they will receive curses and will be driven from their inheritance.\u00a0 All of those things which God has already given them by his grace will be taken away for their faithlessness.\u00a0 In the same way, the conclusion of the gospel as presented in the New Testament in general and by St. Paul in particular is that Christ will return to judge the living and the dead according to their works.\u00a0 This, too, is compared in scripture to a harvest of the fruits of the field.\u00a0 Every branch which does not bear fruit will be cut off and thrown into the fire (Matt 7:19, John 15:2, 6).\u00a0 When the Son of Man comes in glory with his angels, he sends them forth to harvest the wheat and burn the chaff in the fire (Matt 3:12, 16:27).<\/p>\n

Christ as the firstborn is the heir and recipient of all of the promises of God and receives them as an inheritance upon his death, so that he can distribute them to the Church which constitutes his body (Heb 9:15-28).\u00a0 As adopted sons of God and fellow heirs we receive a share of this inheritance in Christ (Rom 8:17).\u00a0 We receive the Holy Spirit as a down payment on our inheritance which is to come in our baptism.\u00a0 In granting us his Spirit, God chooses us and places a calling upon our lives to bear fruit.\u00a0 The fruit of the Spirit are love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control (Gal 5:22-23).\u00a0 We strive in our life in Christ and in his Church to bring forth these fruit, for we know that the time of harvest is coming when we will give an account for what we have done in our lives with the deposit of the inheritance which we have received (Matt 25:14-30, Luke 19:12-27).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Though it may at first seem counterintuitive, the most important Biblical text for understanding the Christian Gospel as St. Paul proclaims it is the book of Deuteronomy.\u00a0 The book of Deuteronomy sums up the Torah, the Pentateuch, in presenting the Prophet Moses’ great final sermon to the people of Israel before his death and their entrance into the land promised to their forefathers.\u00a0 It is, in condensed and pointed form, the covenant document granted by God to his people Israel.\u00a0 In the ancient world, the type of covenant document, ‘berith’ in Hebrew, which is represented in the Old Testament is a particular type of ancient suzerainty treaty.\u00a0 When a king conquered a new city or territory and took possession of\u2026 <\/i> <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"Chosen to Bear Fruit - The Whole Counsel Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2018\/11\/05\/chosen-to-bear-fruit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Chosen to Bear Fruit - The Whole Counsel Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Though it may at first seem counterintuitive, the most important Biblical text for understanding the Christian Gospel as St. Paul proclaims it is the book of Deuteronomy.\u00a0 The book of Deuteronomy sums up the Torah, the Pentateuch, in presenting the Prophet Moses’ great final sermon to the people of Israel before his death and their entrance into the land promised to their forefathers.\u00a0 It is, in condensed and pointed form, the covenant document granted by God to his people Israel.\u00a0 In the ancient world, the type of covenant document, ‘berith’ in Hebrew, which is represented in the Old Testament is a particular type of ancient suzerainty treaty.\u00a0 When a king conquered a new city or territory and took possession of\u2026\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/2018\/11\/05\/chosen-to-bear-fruit\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Whole Counsel Blog\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2018-11-05T22:31:16+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/blogs.ancientfaith.com\/wholecounsel\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/37\/2018\/11\/8186042575_401a078fc5.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Fr. Stephen De Young\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Fr. 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