How does God choose those who will be saved?

Answer 1

Your question implies that you believe that God chooses who will be saved. There are two major beliefs concerning the salvation.

One is that the salvation is for everyone and every man chooses for himself. This is founded in The Bible with 1 John 2:2 "And He is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world." and other verses like John 3:16, or Ezekiel 18:32 "For I have no pleasure in the death of him that dieth, saith the Lord GOD: wherefore turn yourselves, and live ye."

The other theory is that God chooses and only those chosen will have their sins forgiven and eternal life. This doctrine is founded also on verses of the Bible like Romans 9:15 "For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." and others like Proverbs 16:4 "The LORD hath made all things for himself: yea, even the wicked for the day of evil."

In truth, God does not present in the Bible a criteria for choosing people for salvation (see above at Romans 9:15). In other languages like Romanian, the verse from Romans 9:15 sounds like this: "I will have mercy on whom I will like to have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will like to have compassion."

So there is no way to firmly answer your question.

There is a dispute between the people who believe one doctrine or the other. From your question I sense that you believe second one. But if we believe only one part of the Bible, than we discard the other. So we must believe both of them.

Take Peter's case for example. The night before the crucifixion he said 3 times that he didn't know Jesus. But Jesus knew the future, and He told Peter what would happen.

Now, because The Lord said one thing, that means it will happen exactly like that. It could be interpreted that God has made a predestination, and that must be the way things will happen because God said so. But Peter did all that on his own, using his free will.

After all that, when he met the Lord he didn't exalt with joy saying " Lord, I have fulfilled your Word", but he went and cried, because he had denied knowing Jesus on his own.

So the decision of God does not interfere with man's free will, nor does man's free will interfere with what God wants.

But we do know that we have a part in salvation. God said that we must believe in Him and listen to His Word. 1 John 1:8,9 "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness."