Act_9:15 - Chosen Or Called For Service. What Can You Do?

6. Acts 9:15 - Chosen Or Called For Service. What Can You Do?

“But the Lord said unto him, Go thy way: for he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel.”- Acts 9:15.

These were God's instructions to Ananias to go unto Paul and instruct him.  Here we find that Paul was a chosen vessel for service!  And it says, “…to bear my name before Gentiles.”  It does not say, “You are a chosen vessel to be saved.”  Paul was a chosen vessel to bear God's name to a specific people, “before the Gentiles, and kings, and the children of Israel.”  God had a specific purpose in mind for the Apostle Paul.  That is why you find that Paul begins his Epistles the way he does.  For example:

“Paul, a servant of Jesus Christ, called to be an apostle, separated unto the gospel of God.”- Romans 1:1. Not called to salvation, called to be an apostle! One that was sent with the Gospel of Christ. That is what Paul was called to do. In fact, he stated this in the heading of most of his letters as others were constantly challenging his calling as an apostle. He had to constantly reaffirm it. This is similar to the situation in many churches when men in a church will not accept the authority of the pastor who has been called and placed in that church. Paul had to constantly defend his apostleship as many pastors have to defend their pastor-ship in the church God has led them to and in the position to which He has called them and placed them.

We find in 1 Corinthians 12:12 :

“For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of that one body, being many, are one body: so also is Christ.”

Paul goes on to liken the body--the foot, the head, the arms, the mouth--to the church or Body of Christ. We find out in 1 Corinthians 12:18 :

“But now hath God set the members every one of them in the body, as it hath pleased him.”

He also says in 1 Corinthians 12:11 :

“But all these worketh that one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as he will.”

Remember--this is for service, not salvation!  Going to 1 Corinthians 12:6 we find:

“And there are diversities of operation, but it is the same God which worketh all in all.”

God does not call all of us to be evangelists nor does He call all of us to be preachers.  He does not call us all to be Sunday School superintendents, teachers, choir directors, singers or musicians.  But God has called us and given each one of us at least one gift and perhaps more than one.

Here we find in Acts 9:15 that Paul had, very simply, been chosen of God for a specific service.  Just as we are a chosen generation and chosen to serve Christ in the particular avenue to which He has led us and for which He has enabled us.  We are to covet earnestly the best gift with which to serve Him.  Paul was to be an apostle and an evangelist.  That was what God had designated him as a “chosen vessel” for--not for salvation. It is unbelievable that those who build their doctrine of election to salvation would use these Scriptures, taking them completely out of context to support their own philosophy.