Re: Must God Choose Us? Could you explain these two verses. Isaiah 55:6 says, “Seek ye the LORD while he may be found, call ye upon him while he is near” and John 6:44 says, ” No man can come to me, except the Father which hath sent me draw him: and I will raise him up at the last day.” They seem to contradict each other.
Isaiah 55 is primarily a call to the Jewish people to respond to Him. Remember He had a covenant relationship with them, having promised to take them as His people and be their God. (Exodus 6:7). Because of that any of them who came to Him would be accepted. While Isaiah 55:3 holds out the promise of an everlasting covenant, verse 7 shows that this call was to an Old Covenant relationship. In Isaiah 56:1-8 the call was extended to foreigners who kept His covenant as well.
In John 6:44 Jesus was explaining that henceforth keeping the Old Covenant would not be enough to qualify them for a relationship with God. The procedure found in Romans 8:29-30 would apply to both Jews and Gentiles. God foreknew who among all humanity would choose to accept His Son’s death as payment for their sins. Their names had been written in the Lamb’s Book of Life before the foundations of Earth were laid. Those He foreknew, He predestined (appointed) to a place in His Kingdom. At some point in their life, He would call them, and this is what Jesus was talking about. When they respond to the call, as He knows they will, He justifies them (regards them as though innocent) through the Blood of Jesus, and at the rapture/resurrection, He will glorify them as they take their place in the Kingdom.
Matt; 7:7-8, John 3:16, John 6:38-40, Romans 10:9,13, and others clearly explain that the choice to be saved is ours to make. These promises make general to all humanity that which Isaiah 55 made specific to the Jews. They fulfill its promise of the New Covenant as well in that the only condition they contain is belief.