Planting Churches among the City's Poor - Volume 1

104 • P LANTING C HURCHES AMONG THE C ITY ’ S P OOR : V OLUME 1

Key Team Leader Virtue: Consistent reminders to the team that faithfulness to Jesus is inextricably linked to faithfulness to the poor.

III. Is Our Mission’s Hope for the Poor Anchored in the Electing Grace of God?

eklegomai - to select: make choice, choose (out), chosen.

To choose, select, choose for oneself, not necessarily implying the rejection of what is not chosen, but giving favor to the chosen subject, keeping in view a relationship to be established between the one choosing and the object chosen. It involves preference and selection from among many choices. ~ Spiros Zoddhiates. “eklegomai.” The Complete Word Study Dictionary: New Testament. When used in relation to God’s choosing it has special reference “. . . to those whom he has judged fit to receive his favors and separated from the rest of making to be peculiarly his own and to be attended continually by his gracious oversight.”

~ Thayer’s Greek English Lexicon of the Bible.

Luke 6.13 – When morning came, he called his disciples to him and chose [eklegomai] twelve of them, whom he also designated apostles.

Eph. 1.4-5 – For he chose [eklegomai] us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will.

It is therefore significant that the Apostle James takes up the very same concept in regard to the poor.

James 2.5 – Listen, my dear brothers: Has not God chosen [ eklegomai ] those who are poor in the eyes of the world to be rich in faith and to inherit the Kingdom he promised those who love him? When the theology of the Old Testament and the Gospels about the poor is held together with the theology of the poor in the Epistles, a remarkable picture emerges.