But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own possession, to proclaim the virtues of Him who called you out of darkness into His marvelous light. (1 Peter 2:9 BSB)
For you are a holy people belonging to the LORD your God. The LORD your God has chosen you to be his own possession out of all the peoples on the face of the earth. (Deuteronomy 7:6 CSB)
For you are a people holy to the LORD your God, and the LORD has chosen you to be a people for his treasured possession, out of all the peoples who are on the face of the earth. (Deuteronomy 14:2 ESV)
When I was still a new Christian, I read from the Bible that God had chosen Israel. Then I thought to myself, "God is so unfair. What about the other nations?" As I grew older, I came to realize that equal opportunities are not always given to everyone for everything in life, not just in matters of salvation. Everything depends on your time and place in history.
For example, when I was young, I used slide rules to perform calculations in school, but my children used calculators. Similarly, while I had to visit a library and manually copy notes from reference books to do my homework, my children simply Google for information. And now, we even have the convenience of ChatGPT to help me rewrite some of these.
Many founders of false religions feared the charges of unfairness and tried to tell us that their gods or buddhas or supermen had given equal opportunity to all to believe. Only the God of the Bible told us the plain truth - salvation is by grace. There is no equal opportunity.
Why did God choose the nation of Israel? Because any man can write a book and claim that it is from God, but only God can create a nation.
Has any other god dared to take a nation for himself out of another nation by means of trials, miraculous signs, wonders, war, a strong hand, a powerful arm, and terrifying acts? Yet that is what the LORD your God did for you in Egypt, right before your eyes. (Deuteronomy 4:34 NLT)
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