John 15:16 Ye have not chosen me, But I have chosen you…
‘Ye did not choose me.’ How surely He diagnoses the human heart. How inevitably He puts His finger on our greatest shame and sorrow. Like the world in which we lived, and which counts us its own, we chose “after the sight of the eyes and the hearing of the ears.” but as for Jesus, when we saw Him there seemed no beauty that we should desire Him, and we turned away.
We did not choose Him – there you have the evil of the human heart, the film of blindness which sin casts on the sight, the deafness which dulls the ear; for to have missed Jesus is as though the pearl hunter were unable to recognize the pearl of greatest price.
“But I chose you.” He chose us probably because we were useless and helpless, and He wanted to show what supreme miracles His grace could achieve. The principle of God’s election is to take what all others reject. It was for some such reason that He chose us. He knew all that we were, all that we should be. How He could have struck such a poor bargain passes all understanding. But having chosen us, He is going to justify His choice. He will make something of us for the everlasting blessing of mankind, and the everlasting blessedness of our own souls.
F.B. Meyer