Blessing to the nations.

I'm reading, The Mission of God's People:  A Biblical Theology of The Church's Mission, by Christopher J. H. Wright.

This is an excerpt from page 72:

Election is not the rejection of the rest, but ultimately for their benefit.  It is as if a group of trapped cave explorers choose one of their number to squeeze through a narrow flooded passage to get out to the surface and call for help.  The point of the choice is not so that she alone gets saved, but that she is able to bring help and equipment to ensure the rest get rescued.  "Election" in such a case is an instrumental choice of one for the sake of many.

In the same way, God's election of Israel is instrumental in God's mission for all nations.  Election needs to be seen as a doctrine of mission, not a calculus for the arithmetic of salvation.  If we are to speak of being chosen, of being among God's elect, it is to say that, like Abraham, we are chosen for the sake of God's plan that the nations of the world come to enjoy the blessing of Abraham (which is exactly how Paul describes the effect of God's redemption of Israel through Christ in Gal. 3:14).

Reading this book has been a slow-going process (because I read slow, not because of the content), but it's constantly reminding me of why I'm doing what I'm doing and all the things I'm trying to remind or instill in students at RIT.

Our mission is to be a blessing to the nations, not to bring comfort to ourselves.