God Chose You for Life! John 10:10; 15:16 

Grace, mercy, and peace be with you, from God, our Father, and our Lord, Jesus Christ.

Today, as we celebrate the gift and sanctity of life, our theme is: God chose you… for life!

It’s based on John 15:16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you that you should go and bear fruit and that your fruit should abide, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name, he may give it to you.

Indeed, He gives us many blessings, including the great blessing of life itself.

And from John 10:10 The thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I came that they may have life and have it abundantly. 

We have a God who chooses; He has a will, volition; and so He makes choices and decisions.

God made a decision about you before you were born, before anyone was born, even before the world was made – He chose you to be His dear, forgiven, baptized child, to live in His grace on earth, and His glory in Heaven. 

Ephesians 1 says, 3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. 

In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved One, His Son, Jesus.

The first choice God made concerning you, was made before Adam and Eve were created, even before the world was created.

Before anything was made, before there was time and space and matter and energy and life, before creation, in eternity, God chose you to belong to Him, to have His grace and salvation through His Son. It was and is, an eternal choice. 

As God has always existed, so His decision to save you has always existed. 

It has never been in the mind of God not to save His chosen, those who believe in Him and remain faithful to the end; its’ always been set in His mind to redeem your life. So resolute and determined is God to forgive and save you.

But, God couldn’t have made that eternal decision to save His children, had He not also made a choice to create them; not just make them alive, but to make them alive in His image, with a living soul. 

Since God chose to make humanity in His image, with body and soul, for that reason, human life is sacred above all other life. 

The sanctity of your life was God’s choice for you, His decision that you have benefitted from and have been greatly blessed by! 

By making you in His image, God gave you volition, as He has, a will, the ability to make decisions and choices. If we had not been made with the ability to choose, we’d be more like robots or puppets, than people.

But there was a danger in making people with the ability to choose; it also meant they could choose evil over good, and self over God, which is what Adam and Eve did, and what we all have done by our sins against God and others.

Because of the choice God made in eternity to save you, He also chose to send His Son to carry out His plan of salvation, so that God’s creation of humanity would not be in vain.

Although His Son was sorely tempted, more intensely than any other person has ever been tempted, Jesus chose goodness over sin 

As a man He chose, and as the Son of God He had the power, to lead a holy life, perfect in love. 

And in His perfect love for humanity, and perfect obedience to His Father, Jesus chose to die and then rise for our life and salvation. Thanks be to God for that loving choice that Jesus made to save us, for we can in no way save ourselves.

When we fell into sin, we lost the power to choose to follow God, but God chose to send His Son, who chose to win our salvation, who chose to send His Spirit,              who gives us the power to believe, through which we have abundant life.    

Jesus says, I have come that they have life and have it abundantly. 

Life at its’ best is the life God chooses for us and gives to us through His Son.

God gives and chooses life for us in so many ways. 

God chose life for us when He created us; He chose life for us when He redeemed us; and He chose life for us when He baptized us. 

He chooses life for us everyday as He gives us all we need to sustain this body and life, as we say in the meaning of the First Article.

Every time we hear His Word and receive His body and blood, God is choosing life for us.

When He raises us in glory, and takes us to our eternal home, He will, again, be choosing life for us.

Because God chooses life for us, He calls us to choose life.

Jesus tells us in John 15:16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you, that you should go and bear fruit, and that your fruit should abide, endure.

A part of the fruit that we bear is to honor and keep God’s gift of life, and endure, not grow weary of defending it, especially in a culture like ours, that, in some significant ways, would try to diminish the sanctity of life.

When our society, and the laws of our land, disregard and dishonor the sanctity of life, God calls His chosen people to courageously speak up for and champion life, but to so with love and respect, never with hateful words, or acts of violence.

Honoring life means loving our neighbors as ourselves -- loving others as God loves us, even those we disagree with, even those who are wrong or mistaken. 

This doesn’t mean we don’t confront or address those who oppose the sanctity of life, we do, but with loving respect.

Respecting and honoring life means working to preserve and protect it in a sometimes bold, and sometimes gentle, but always godly and respectful way.

Since human life is made in God’s image and is therefore sacred, we have no right or authority take it unjustly, but rather we are to keep and sanctify life.   

God chose to make that preborn child alive with an immortal; soul; we don’t have the prerogative to take that life which is sacred to God, as each life is. 

God doesn’t give us that option -- no mother or father or anyone.

Even if the laws of the land permit it, the laws of Scripture and conscience forbid it; Biblical and natural law forbid it for all.

Because He chose life for us, we choose life for one another, including preborn babies, disabled, terminally ill, young and old, all are made in God’s image, and so each life sacred. 

There are those sad and difficult situations, like choosing between the life of a mother or her preborn child; or in the case of the terminally ill, when to choose not to take treatments, or not to take or continue heroic efforts to sustain a person’s life. 

It can be hard to know what to do in these situations, and so we gather information and consider the advice of professionals, and with the support of family and friends and church, we pray and make a decision, and leave it in the hands of our good and gracious God. 

We confess that there have been times when we haven’t honored the sanctity of life as we should. God’s forgiveness washes that guilt away, and His love empowers us to go forward as friends of, and advocates for, life.

From a Biblical perspective, and even from the perspective of natural law, we can clearly see that life is the right choice. 

Looking at it from a political or legal or constitutional point of view, the right to live is the most basic of human rights. That’s just common sense. 

If you take away the right to live, all other rights become irrelevant. All human rights begin and depend on that first and greatest, most fundamental of civil rights, the right to live.

Advances in science and medical technology are making it increasingly clear that that what Scripture teaches is true, as it always is, that preborn babies are living beings, and not just a blob of cells, as some would say.  

Again, common sense can see otherwise. 

Choosing on the side of life is the wise, and rational, and loving choice to make.    

In a world that sometimes chooses against the sanctity of life; and in a nation that sometimes rules against the sanctity of life, may we, God’s people who have been chosen for earthly and eternal life, for abundant life, may we always choose, and value, and speak up for, and pray for, and advocate for, and champion… the sanctity of every human life. 

May we always treasure and sanctify life as the sacred gift it is. 

And as we treasure God’s gift of life, His peace, which passes understanding, will guard our hearts and minds in Christ Jesus, who chose life for us. 

Thanks be to God that He did! Amen.

We now proclaim God’s gift of created, redeemed, and sanctified life in the words of the Apostles’ Creed.