Not all are chosen, i.e., not everyone is elect (eklectos).  However, everyone is called (i.e. invited) through the gospel.  Now everyone who is in Christ is elect, and all of those were called through the gospel.  Yet, not everyone who is invited is the elect, for not all who are invited will accept the invitation.  Refer to the parable in Matthew 22:1-14.  The king had guests he had invited before the banquet was ready.  When he sent out for them, they refused to come, and in extreme cases murdered the king's servants.  Those the king invited were in essence called, but they chose to refuse the king's goodness.  Afterward, the king sent out his servants to invite everyone they could find out in the streets.  These were invited by the king and accepted the invitation.  One man was found without wedding clothes. 

This man may have been brought in the streets along with the others.  In this case he and the others were given proper attire for the banquet.  Thus, he was invited, but did not continue in the king's goodness in providing the proper attire.  On the other hand, he came off the street without invitation and so had not business being there.  Whatever case is true, this parable illustrates that invitation is not on our terms, but on God's.  It was the king's goodness to invite those off the street to his banquet, just as it was his goodness to invite those who rejected him.  Neither group of invitees were invited on their merits or status.  Those who do not continue in the kings goodness or who are not invited will not have the benefits of that goodness.

The invitation of the gospel is not given to us because of our own merits or background.  Regardless of our gender, our religious or ethnic heritage, we are called by the cross to come to Christ and be reconciled to the God who made us.  No one is excluded from His call through the gospel.  "For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.  For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.  Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God's one and only Son" (John 3:16:-18).  Whoever believes, not just a few that God foreordained, will "have eternal life".  Jesus died for the sins of the world, not an elect few.  So through His Son, God invites the world to repent and be saved.  Those who do not believe are condemned because the did not believe the gospel; not because God foreordained their damnation.  He did not peer down corridors of time and pick out Joe on the street and say "he's condemned" or "he's saved."  If we present the gospel (i.e. the invitation) and he believes, then he is saved and elect in Christ.  Yet, if Joe does not believe, and continues in unbelief he will stand condemned because of unbelief in God's Son.

Belief is not how we earn salvation, it is how we accept the invitation.  It is how we RSVP.           

Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: "The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son.  He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come."

Matthew 22:1-3

In transition from the discussion of election into that of calling, I am going to discuss here Parable of the Wedding Banquet Jesus tells in Matthew 22:1-14. 

This parable illustrates well the history of Israel's election.  They are the ones who in the parable were invited to the banquet but refused to come.  It is quite interesting how the story plays out, closely parallel to the history of Israel and her rebellion.  God sent his servants-Moses, Aaron, Joshua, and the Judges.  Yet largely, the people of Israel ignored them and went after the ways of the Canaanites.  It even got to where the people tired of God's servants and requested a human king like the Gentiles.  

Yahweh then sent His prophets, just as the king in the story sends a second volley of servants to gather his invited guests.  "But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business.  The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them.  The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city" (Matt 22:5-7).  This corresponds to the post-Solomon monarchy, which had Israel divided into Northern (Israel) and Southern (Judah) kingdoms.  Although Judah had a few godly kings, but the North and South were like the invited guests in the parable, they either ingnored Yahweh's servants or they killed them.  Both kingdoms met God's wrath through foreign armies.  Israel through Assryia, and Judah through Babylon.

After the transgression of these invited guests, the king sent out more servants to gather everyone they could find.  Since the invited guests proved unworthy to come, the invitation was extended to those who previously were not invited.  This is precisely what Paul in Romans 9-11 was teaching.  Particularly in Romans 11, Paul brings out the fact that Israel's transgression in rejecting Christ has meant good for the Gentiles.  It was through their rejection that the Gentiles were accepted.  Israel rejected the invitation, and so it was extended to the Gentiles.  And this was foretold in the OT, as Paul points out in Galatians where he says, "the Scripture foresaw that the Gentiles would be justified by faith."  This was foreseen in the life of Abraham, for he believed God, and so was declared righteous (i.e. justified by faith); moreover, it was told Abraham that the Gentiles (peoples/nations) would be blessed through his seed (which is Christ).

The parable also has some relation (as far as the idea) to Paul analogy of the olive trees.  In Jesus' parable, the folly of the invited guests was the invitation of those who were not invited.  In Paul's analogy in Romans 11, it was the cutting off of unbelieving Israel that gave place for the grafting in of Gentiles.  In Jesus' parable, a certain man from off the street was found not wearing wedding clothes, which may have been provided for him.  Because he refused the king's goodness and did not wear the attire provided him, he was thrown out.  In Romans 11, Paul admonishes the ingrafted Gentiles to continue in God's goodness, or they too may be cut off as was unbelieving Israel

For many are invited, but few are chosen

Matthew 22:14

In this portion, we will look at the promises given to Abraham and how they connect to election in Christ of all who as John says, "receive him and believe in his name."  In Genesis 12:2-3, God tells Abraham:

    I will make you into a great nation
       and I will bless you;
       I will make your name great,
       and you will be a blessing.

In answering his question in Romans 11, "did God reject his people", Paul observed that he himself was a Jew.  He then cites from the book of Kings were Elijah fears he is the only remaining prophet of Yahweh.  Yahweh corrects the weary prophet, saying, "I have reserved for myself seven thousand who have not bowed the knee to Baal" (Romans 11:4).  Even so, Paul assures his readers, God has a remnant within Israel, chosen by grace-the grace that is in Jesus Christ.  God has not chosen this remnant because of their work of keeping the law, but by His grace, which is entered through faith in Christ.  God's people, then, are not those who know the law in their minds and have an outward faithfulness to it, but who have died with Christ to the law (which condemns them because of the sinful nature) and are made alive to God by the Spirit (who is now transforming them into the likeness of Christ).

Paul is not teaching God's election of individuals.  God's election is based not on works, or even on an individual's faith, but it is based on God's grace.  And what has Paul taught about grace?  "All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus" (Romans 3:23-24).  By God's grace in Christ, we are justified and redeemed.  How do we enter this grace? "We have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ, through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we now stand" (Romans 5:1-2).  We "have gained access by faith".  Election is not in nationality, invidividual merit, but in Christ by the grace of God, and we enter through faith in Christ.    

Now if we enter this grace by faith, then is our election in Christ based on our merit?  Not at all!  In Romans 5, Paul calls our salvation a gift.  This grace that is in Christ is a gift from God.  Now, a gift comes at he expense of the giver. It is God's own effort and Christ's righteousness that has purchased the gift.  Even as the gift is offered, it must be received.  Now we cannot take this gift with our hands, and we cannot simple have cognition that the gift is available.  We must receive it by faith.  John says that as many as "received him and believed in his name" were given the right to be God's children.  We must receive the gift of God in trust-trust in the merits of Christ on our behalf; not in our own merits.          

Election in Scripture (i.e. the Old and New Testament) is primarily related to Israel.  God chose Israel as a people of His very own.  Therefore, say to the Israelites: 'I am the LORD, and I will bring you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.  In Exodus 6:6-8, Yahweh says, "I will free you from being slaves to them, and I will redeem you with an outstretched arm and with mighty acts of judgment.  I will take you as my own people, and I will be your God. Then you will know that I am the LORD your God, who brought you out from under the yoke of the Egyptians.  And I will bring you to the land I swore with uplifted hand to give to Abraham, to Isaac and to Jacob. I will give it to you as a possession."  In the NT, Peter greets the "elect exiles of the dispersion in Pontus, Galatia, Cappadocia, Asia, and Bithynia" (1 Peter 1:1 ESV).  No less is this evident in the epistles of Paul.

In Romans, Paul expresses his heart for his kinsmen.  "I wish that I would be cut off from Christ," he says, "if it would mean my fellow Jews could be saved."  Then he explains why the unbelief of his Jewish brothers is so tragic, because, "theirs is the adoption as sons...divine glory...covenants...receiving of the law...temple worship...the promises...the patriarchs...the human ancestry of Christ" (Romans 9:4-5).  In Ephesians 1:4-5, Paul tells his Gentile audience that "For he chose 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."  By "us" Paul means the Jews, and this reveals the purpose of Israel's election.  God chose Israel for His purpose, and by His love.  He chose the Jews to bring His Son into the world so that through Him the world might be saved.  Even their rejection of Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ (i.e. Messiah) was made a blessing for the Gentile world.  For as Paul explains in Romans 11, " because of their transgression, salvation has come to the Gentiles" (v11).  Yet Paul finishes that sentence by stating that salvation has come to the Gentiles to make the Jews jealous.  Paul made much of his ministry to the Gentiles in hope of stirring that envy in his kinsmen so that they too would receive what they were promised long before the Gentiles.

Does the election of Israel, then, mean that every Jew will be saved, or that they are saved by virtue of their election?  While the former is barely fathomable, the latter is surely untrue.  Paul himself, and all the apostles teach in the NT that only through faith in Jesus Christ is anyone, Jew or Gentile, saved.  Moreover, election is not on an individual basis.  Israel was God's elect people (i.e. nation or group), not His elect individuals.  God did not choose Israel because of the character of her people, just as God did not choose to bless Jacob instead of Esau because of Jacob's outstanding character (which it was not).  So when Paul is confident that "all Israel" will be saved, he is not thinking in terms of every individual.  In Romans 11:26, Paul quotes from Isaiah, where he says, "The deliverer will come from Zion;/ he will turn godlessness away from Jacob."  The deliverer who comes from Zion is Jesus, who will turn godlessness away from Jacob (i.e. Israel) through the New Covenant that is in His blood (thus Paul also quotes from Jeremiah 31:33).  As Isaiah says, He will turn godlessness away from those of Jacob who repent of their sin, for in the New Covenant, Yahweh promises to forgive their sin.

Earlier in Romans 11, Paul asks the question, "Did God reject his own people?"  His answer is emphatically, "By no means!"  And appeals to Elijah (1 Kings 19) to demonstrate that there is a remnant of Israel that is "chosen by grace"  Elijah thought himself to be the only one left who was faithful to Yahweh, yet God had thousands of faithful prophets.  So it is with Israel and the New covenant.  As a nation, Israel has not entered into that covenant, however many Jews did enter that covenant, and those Jews represent the remnant of Israel, chosen by grace and delivered from ungodliness through faith in Jesus the Messiah.