On January 16, 1994, sometime after I read the verses we are going to explore this morning, I reflected on the tension I felt over how a loving God could choose and predestine a person before the foundation of the world for salvation. I wasn’t angry over what I read in these verses, but I was disturbed; I was disturbed to the point of a near crisis of faith even though I had only been a Christian for just over two years.
While I read over Ephesians 1:3-6; I also read similar passages such as Romans 8:28-30; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; John 6:44, and the entire chapter of Romans 9. I read these passages without the aid of books or commentaries, for it was only me and my Bible. I knew nothing of John Calvin or Jacobus Arminius, nor was I aware of their teachings by which we get Calvinism and Arminianism. I share this with you because I want you to know; that if some of you currently struggle with what you see in Ephesians 1:3-6, I also struggled with these same verses, and it took a lot of time for me to work through it, with just me and my Bible. What is clear, however, is that God’s love for you is older than dirt.
There are three words that are linked to what it means to be “blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ…” (v. 3) that I want to focus our time on that I believe will help you work through what it is Paul is saying in these verses, and those words are: chose (v. 4), predestined (v. 5), and favored (v. 6).
God Chose the Christian to be Holy and Blameless (v. 4)
What was so hard about my struggle with verses 3-6 is that this verse could not have been any clearer: “God chose us in Jesus before the foundation of the world…”; the Greek word used for “world” is kosmos, and it refers to creation. When did God do it? Before He invented dirt. How did God do it? Through His Son, Jesus. Why did He do it? That those who were chosen, “…would be holy and blameless before Him.” Before we can get to why God chose, we need to understand what it means for Him to choose.
To choose is to pick or select someone or something. Every November we vote and when we vote, we choose certain candidates that we hope receive enough votes to be elected to whatever office it is that they are running for. In the case of verse 4, to choose is to elect. From verses like the ones before us this morning and others like it, we get the doctrine of elections (aka the doctrine of predestination). No person or theologian who believes the Bible to be the word of God denies what Paul is saying here, but where theologians, pastors, and Christians throughout the ages have disagreed is how it was that God chose the Christian before the foundation of the world.
Let me summarize the most popular ways people have explained how it was that God “chose.”
- God chose you for salvation because you freely chose Him. You were drawn to him, but it wasn’t until you chose Him that He chose you.
- God chose not only you but the body of Christ that is the Church to be the group of people who receive salvation freely by faith in Jesus. So, God does not choose individuals for salvation, but he has chosen before the foundation of the world that it would be through Christ that people would be saved.
- God chose you for salvation because he sees all things eternally, and because He can see peoples and events both present and future, He sovereignly chose you because he already knew you would freely choose Jesus for the forgiveness of your sins.
Of the three views I mentioned, the third is the one I gravitated towards and believed was the best of the three options; I even stated in my journal on January 20, 1994, “Due to the Scriptures and that all scripture is inspired by God, my conclusion on predestination is made: God is all-knowing therefore He predestined us for salvation, but allowed us to choose him for salvation.” At the time, my conclusion seemed to reconcile Ephesians 1:3-6 and others like it with passages like 2 Peter 3:9, “The Lord is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not willing for any to perish, but for all to come to repentance.”
There is a fourth view that I have come to appreciate due to two realities I never considered back in 1994, the first concerns the fact that God stands outside of time because time is a part of creation, therefore He is not bound to time and does not make choices based on what He can see down the corridors of time because He stands outside of time. The other reality I did not consider back in 1994 was Ephesians 1:1-4, which states: “And you were dead in your offenses and sins, in which you previously walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all previously lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the rest (Eph. 2:1-3).”
In light of Ephesians 1:3-6, how can a person respond to God in faith when that person is spiritually dead? Can the spiritually dead do anything spiritual? Can the spiritually dead will themselves alive just enough to believe in God? What does Paul mean by “dead” in Ephesians 2:1? The Greek word could not be any clearer, it is “nekros.” Do you want to know what nekros means? It means this: “no longer having life.” So how dead is dead? So, the question I had to answer is a question you must answer as well, and that question is simply this: “How can the spiritual dead do anything apart from God doing something?” Paul gives us the answer in Ephesians 2:4-5, “But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ” (Eph. 2:4–5).
The point of verse 4 is simply this: You, who were once spiritually dead. You who once, lived in the lusts of your flesh, indulged the desires of your flesh, you who followed the prince of this world, and you who were once a child of wrath…He chose you before the foundation of the world to be holy and blameless in Christ. Whatever you are doing with verse 4, whatever you want to do with verse 4, and whatever you plan to do with verse 4, one thing is very clear: God acted first. When you had no ability or desire to find Him, He found you. John Stott was right when he wrote “The doctrine of election is a divine revelation, not a human speculation.”[1]
God Predestined the Christian for Love (v. 5)
What does it mean to be chosen? It means that God predestined you to something. What does “predestination” mean? It means, “to determine something ahead of time before its occurrence.”[2] So, according to verse 5, before God invented dirt, He planned for your adoption as a son or daughter through all that Jesus would do on your account for your sin on a cross that we all deserved.
We know we deserved the cross because of what Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:3, which is that all of us at one point in our lives were, “…by nature children of wrath, just as the rest.” In Romans 3:10-11, we are told just how bad our spiritual deadness is: “…as it is written: “There is no righteous person, not even one; there is no one who understands, there is no one who seeks out God” (Rom. 3:10–11). Since when have I been spiritually dead? According to Psalm 51:5, “Behold, I was brought forth in guilt, and in sin my mother conceived me.” Just in case you are not sure what to make of Psalm 51:5, consider Ecclesiastes 9:2, “Furthermore, the hearts of the sons of mankind are full of evil, and insanity is in their hearts throughout their lives.”
So, with Ephesians 2:1-3 and a whole bunch of other verses about our spiritual problem as our backdrop, let’s read again Ephesians 1:5 more closely and thoughtfully: “In Love He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will…”. In other words, among the mass of spiritually dead humanity that has postured themselves against God as, “sons of disobedience” who “walk according to the course of this world,” God chose you, Christian, in Jesus, before He created dirt, to be holy and blameless.
God chose you because you were dead, dead, dead, and because you were dead, He did the thing that no one else could have done! God raised your spiritually dead and helpless self. Why did He do it? Well, we are told that He did it “In love…” and if that is not enough for you, Paul elaborates and tells us that He did it, according to “the good pleasure of His will.” And if that is not enough for you, he further elaborates on that point in the next chapter: “…being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead… made us alive together with Christ” (2:4-5). It is because of God’s love, His will, and His good pleasure that you who were once dead, now stand before Him as a son or as a daughter solely because of the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ!
Dear Christian, the point of Ephesians 1:3-6 is this: you are only a Christian because of a merciful God who set His affection upon you by sending His son to endure a wrath you deserved for the purpose of adopting you to be His child out of an infinite love no one deserves.
God Favored the Christian in Christ (v. 6)
So, let’s walk through these verses now that we have observed the scenery of God’s word that surrounds Ephesians 1:3-6. If you are a Christian, you were once dead in your sins, you were hostile towards God, and there was no real motive in you to seek the true God, and in spite of all of that, God the Father chose to make you alive in His Son, Jesus, before Genesis 1:1 ever happened, and He did it so that you, “…would be holy and blameless before Him.” The point of verse 4 is that God did something you were powerless to do.
Not only did God the Father choose you to be holy and blameless by making you alive in His Son, but He predestined us to be His adopted child with all the rights and privileges that come with being a son or a daughter, and He did it by putting His Son, who kept the Law, on a cross to atone for your guilt from breaking His cosmic Law just as the Bible declares: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us—for it is written: ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’” (Gal. 3:13). If that is not clear enough for you, we also are told in Colossians 2:13-14, “And when you were dead in your wrongdoings and the uncircumcision of your flesh, He made you alive together with Him, having forgiven us all our wrongdoings, having canceled the certificate of debt consisting of decrees against us, which was hostile to us; and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross” (Col. 2:13–14). You were not only dead in your sins before Christ, but the Bible informs us that we are now redeemed by Jesus who were once enemies of God: “For if while we were enemies we were reconciled to God through the death of His Son, much more, having been reconciled, we shall be saved by His life” (Rom. 5:10). What this means dear friends, is this: You were once dead in your sins, are now alive in Christ, and are now reconciled to God. You who are reconciled to God, are now a friend of God (John 15:14-15).
If you are still confused as to why He did it, look no further than verse 6. Not only did He save your sorry soul because He simply loved you, and not only did He redeem you as his child out of His good pleasure of His will alone, but He did it, “to the praise of the glory of His grace, with which He favored you in His Beloved Son” (v. 6). By the way, the word “favored” literally means, “to become the recipient of God’s freely bestowed, beneficent goodwill.” What this means is that you were saved from your sins, and it was not due to anything in you, but solely because of the love of the Father who sent His Son who willingly became sin for us (2 Cor. 5:21). In his book, Friendship with God, Mike McKinley wrote what I think is a good way to end this sermon: “Your status before God doesn’t depend on your performance, or work, or obedience; it depends on Jesus, and he did everything perfectly to make you God’s friend. Nothing can ever separate you from God’s love in Christ (Rom. 8:38-39). Once He has made you His friend through faith in Jesus, you can never be his enemy again.”[3]
In closing, permit me to give you some pointers that will help you listen, understand, and submit to the authority of the Bible:
- Do not try to bend what you read in the Bible to your will. If you want to grow as a Christian, you must submit your will to the authority of the Bible as God’s Word.
- The Bible is one book, therefore read every verse in the Bible within the context of its surrounding verses, chapters, and books.
- When you study your Bible, pray to God to help you understand and apply His Word to your life.
- Read every verse in the Bible with the understanding that God does not need to get better. So, if you read a story, chapter, or verse in the Bible that you do not like, understand you are the one who needs to improve at being good, not God.
- Just because you do not understand or do not like something you have read in the Bible, does not mean that it is untrue.
- At the end of the day, what matters is what God’s Word says, not what you think the Bible says, what your pastor says the Bible says, what your family says the Bible says, what your friends say the Bible says, or anyone else says that the Bible says. What matters is what God’s Word says about who He is, who we are, and what we are called to do in this short life we have been gifted.
- If you have heard anything this morning, I hope you have heard this: Ephesians 1:3-6 teaches us that you are a Christian not because of what you have done, but because of everything God has done, and because of Jesus, you are now a child and a friend of God Almighty!
