Last week, we entered into spiritual basic training as we began to dig into our training manual – Paul’s letter to the church at Ephesus. In the first three verses of that letter, we discovered that God has set his followers apart for salvation, for service and for spiritual blessings. Let’s see how well we’re doing with our Scripture memory and see if we can recite those first three verses from memory before Dave puts them up on the screen:
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, To the saints in Ephesus, the faithful in Christ Jesus: Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ.
You’ll remember that last week we said that verse 3 was the beginning of one long sentence that ends in verse 14. In those 12 verses, Paul is going to describe for us many of those spiritual blessings that God has provided for us through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. This morning we’re going to look at just three verses that describe those blessings. So once again, let’s see how well we’re doing with our Scripture memory before Dave puts the verses up on the screen.
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 - to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
There is no way that we can deal with this text this morning without coming face to face with a topic that has been the source of much debate among Biblical scholars, pastors and Christians over the years – the relationship between God’s election and predestination and man’s free will. Or perhaps a more accurate description would be the relationship between God’s sovereignty and man’s responsibility.
Over the years, two basic camps have developed on this issue. On one side are the Calvinists, a group that is named after John Calvin, an early 16th century theologian who was instrumental in the Protestant reformation. This set of beliefs is also referred to as “reformed theology”.
Calvin’s followers organized this set of beliefs into what are known as the five points of Calvinism. We don’t have nearly enough time this morning to even begin to tackle a theological system that generally takes a semester or two to cover in seminary. Although it is a great simplification, for purposes of our time together this morning, we can look at Calvinism as having an emphasis on the doctrines of election and predestination. The emphasis is on the sovereignty of God in the process of salvation.
In the other camp are the Arminians, who as you might expect get their name from their founder, Jacobus Arminius. Arminius was a Dutch pastor and theologian in the late 16th and early 17th century who disputed many of Calvin’s conclusions. His most well-known follower was John Wesley, who became the leader of the Methodist movement. Again, we can’t even begin to discuss all the beliefs of that theological system this morning. They still believe that salvation is by grace alone, but their chief difference with the Calvinists is that they believe God’s election and predestination is conditional upon faith in Jesus. They alos focus more on the role of man’s will in the process of salvation.
My purpose in bringing up these two camps this morning is not to promote one view or the other. And it is certainly not to create any kind of division or conflict in our church. I don’t want us to become like the group of theologians who were discussing the tension between predestination and free will. Things became so heated that the group broke up into two opposing factions.
But one man, not knowing which to join, stood for a moment trying to decide. At last he joined the predestination group. "Who sent you here?" they asked. "No one sent me," he replied. "I came of my own free will." "Free will!" they exclaimed. "You can’t join us! You belong with the other group!"
So he followed their orders and went to the other clique. There someone asked, "When did you decide to join us?" The young man replied, "Well, I didn’t really decide--I was sent here." "Sent here!" they shouted. "You can’t join us unless you have decided by your own free will!"
What I want to do this morning is to just look at the Scriptures themselves and develop our theology from the Bible itself. So let’s continue our basic training this morning with a look at these three verses.
I’ve got to be real honest with you this morning. I really struggled with how to present this passage to you in a way that would be meaningful and useful. And you know how much I like to try to keep things simple and to use alliteration or an acrostic to help us remember the principles we’ve learned together. But frankly there was just no way to do that this week and still be true to the text.
But as I wrestled with the text this week, it became really clear that this passage is all about what God has done for us. And in these three verses, there are three verbs that describe the actions that God has taken in the lives of His children in order to pour out spiritual blessings into their lives. So we’ll use those three actions as an outline for our study of this passage this morning.
1. God chose us to be holy and blameless.
For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight.
The first way that God gave us spiritual blessings was that He chose us. The verb “chose” is a reflexive verb. It means that God picked us for His own purposes, for Himself. In other words, our salvation is totally and completely a result of what God has already done for us. This morning, if you have made Jesus Christ your Forgiver and your Master, it is only because God chose you before the creation of the world. That is what is known by theologians as the doctrine of election.
My first reaction to seeing that God has chosen me was to think of it in terms that I can understand. It took me back to those days in our neighborhood and in the schoolyard when we would pick teams in order to participate in some kind of sport or competition. I’m sure many of you remember those days – and maybe not too fondly. A couple of kids would be designated as captains and then they would proceed to pick the other kids that they wanted on their team. And for some of the kids waiting to be picked, it was a miserable time as they prayed against all hope that they wouldn’t be the last ones picked.
But that’s not the way God chooses. God doesn’t look at us and pick out the best or the brightest or the most athletic. In fact, His choice is not based at all on any of the qualities in our lives. That’s very obvious from this verse:
• The first thing we see is that we were chosen “in Him”. The “Him” here obviously refers to Jesus Christ. God chooses us, not based on our own good works, but based on the finished work of Jesus Christ on the cross.
• The other thing we see is that we were chosen “before the creation of the world.” That means that God chose us before we ever had the opportunity to do either good or evil in our lives.
I’m convinced that a lot of us aren’t really comfortable with this whole idea that God chooses whoever He wants. In fact, this week I’ve read the writings of a whole lot of people who have tried to ignore, discount or disprove this truth. But that’s impossible to do because the principle is consistent throughout the Bible.
For instance, God chose Abraham. Why did He choose Abraham and not someone else? We don’t know, but God chose. God chose Israel from among all the nations of the earth to be His people. Why didn’t he choose the Moabites or the Malekites or one of those other “ites”? It certainly wasn’t because Israel had earned that right. God just chose them.
The same thing is true for us. God didn’t choose us because we deserved it. He did it because He wanted to.
But, you say, “I did do something. I had to have faith in Jesus Christ.” I’ve even seen a tract called “The Tie-Breaking Vote” which essentially says this: God has voted for you. Satan has voted against you. It’s now up to you to cast the tie-breaking vote.” First of all, I’m not sure how Satan got a vote that was equal to God’s. But even more importantly, Christianity is not a democracy. It’s more like a monarchy and God, the King, has absolute sovereignty over who get into His kingdom.
The Bible is really clear that unless God chooses us, we’re not even capable of making the decision to place our faith in Jesus on our own. Here’s what Jesus had to say about that:
"No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him, and I will raise him up at the last day…He went on to say, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless the Father has enabled him."
John 6:44, 65 (NIV)
Paul confirms that truth in another one of his letters:
As it is written: "There is no one righteous, not even one; there is no one who understands, no one who seeks God.
Romans 3:10, 11 (NIV)
As we’ll see in more detail when we get in to Chapter 2, even our faith is a gift from God. Apart from God’s choosing there is not one person on the face of the earth who has the ability on his or her own to seek after God. We can only do that as God chooses us and draws us to Him.
Now I know that for many of us, me included, the whole doctrine of election raises some questions. Although I obviously can’t answer all of your questions this morning, let me deal with a couple of the most common:
• If God chooses some people to be saved, does that mean that he creates others for the purpose of being sent to hell? That’s what theologians call double predestination.
While we’ve seen that God is 100% responsible for electing and choosing those who become believers, the Bible is equally clear that man is responsible for his own sin. Here are just a couple verses that make that point:
The soul who sins is the one who will die…
Ezekiel 18:20 (NIV)
For the wages of sin is death…
Romans 6:23 (NIV)
The Bible also makes it clear that God is not the author or the source of sin and that therefore he does not actively take a role in the life of unbelievers to cause them to sin and reject God.
So what that ultimately means is that the Bible teaches both the sovereignty of God and the responsibility of man. God elects those who are saved and those who perish do so without any help from God. The problem is that our finite human minds have a problem reconciling those two principles. To us they seem contradictory, but in fact they are not. There are some things that only God understands – that’s what makes Him God. And that’s OK with me. I’m fine with just accepting both these principles and allowing God to figure out how they fit together.
I really like John MacArthur’s comments on this subject:
Now, let me tell you something. One of the greatest marks of the inspiration of the scripture is the fact that it has those incomprehensible paradoxes. Because, if a man or men had written that book, they never would have, number one, conceived them; number two, they never would have left them there. They would have resolved them. The fact that they are there and they stand all over the place in the Bible is one of the truest proofs that God of an infinite mind far beyond our own wrote those things. And, the very fact that there are those irreconcilable apparent paradoxes in scripture speaks of divine authorship. God understands how they harmonize. We don’t. And, that means God has a greater mind than we do. Aren’t you glad about that?
[From John MacArthur’s Questions and Answers - http://www.biblebb.com/files/macqa/1301-Q-11.htm]
• The fact that God chooses some and not others just doesn’t seem fair.
What would be fair would be for God to condemn everyone to hell. That’s what we all deserve. But out of His mercy, God has chosen some to be saved from the fate that they deserve.
For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.
Romans 9:15, 16 (NIV)
Because He is God, God gets to choose who He will have mercy on and who He will not. And that decision is completely independent of anything we can do. It is simply a function of God’s sovereignty. Again, Paul confirms that truth in his second letter to Timothy:
… God, who has saved us and called us to a holy life - not because of anything we have done but because of his own purpose and grace. This grace was given us in Christ Jesus before the beginning of time,
2 Timothy 1:8, 9 (NIV)
So God has chosen us for Himself. That is quite clear from Scripture. But the second part of this verse tells us what he has chosen us for. In Jesus, we have been chosen to be holy and blameless in His sight. Although there is an aspect of that choosing which calls for us to live lives that are holy and pleasing to God, you’ll notice here that the main point is that our holiness and blamelessness is “in Him”. It is only through Jesus Christ that we can be holy and blameless before God and fulfill God’s election.
Before we leave this first blessing, let me just give you one more illustration. Let me ask you a question – Who lives out your Christian life? The Arminians out there would answer “I do” and the Calvinists out there would answer “God does”. But the correct answer is that both are true. Let’s just look at one passage that confirms that. I’m going to use the NLT version in honor of Nate Kugler, who so correctly points out how that translation captures the essence of what Paul is writing:
Dearest friends, you were always so careful to follow my instructions when I was with you. And now that I am away you must be even more careful to put into action God’s saving work in your lives, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire to obey him and the power to do what pleases him.
Philippians 2:12, 13 (NLT)
Paul commands his readers to “put into action God’s saving work in your lives”. That’s my human responsibility. But then in the very next verse he says that it’s God working in you that gives you the desire and ability to do that. That’s God’s sovereignty. So which is true – God’s election or His sovereignty or man’s will or responsibility? They both are.
I know you’re really worried now because we’ve spent so much time on this first point. But this won’t be an hour and a half message. The work we’ve done so far will make these next two parts of God’s spiritual blessing go pretty quick.
2. God predestined us to be part of His family because it gives Him pleasure.
In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will -
In verse 4, we looked at the fact of God’s election. Here in verse 5, we discover the destiny that comes with that election. When God elects us, He predestines us. That word just means that He determines in advance what our destiny will be. And the destiny of every person that God has chosen is that they will become a member of His family.
Later on in Ephesians, Paul is going to write about how all of us are initially born into this world separated from God. None of us are naturally born into His family. Therefore the only way we can enter into God’s family is to be “born again” spiritually as Jesus describes in John 3. Or another picture that both Paul and John use to describe this process is that we have to be adopted by God as part of His family. John describes our need for adoption in his gospel:
Yet to all who received him, to those who believed in his name, he gave the right to become children of God - children born not of natural descent, nor of human decision or a husband’s will, but born of God.
John 1:12, 13 (NIV)
Since we’re not naturally born into God’s family the only way we can become part of that family is through adoption. And everyone that God chooses He also adopts as part of His family. And one of the things that happens when we become part of that family is that God, as our Father, works to make us more like Him and like His Son:
For those God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the likeness of his Son, that he might be the firstborn among many brothers.
Romans 8:29 (NIV)
We’ve all heard the phrase “like father, like son.” And that certainly applies to our destiny as a member of God’s family. We’ve been predestined to be part of God’s family and predestined to become more and more like Jesus Christ as we participate in that family.
The fact that our destiny is to be part of God’s family is exciting enough. But look at the last part of this verse. We’ve been adopted into God’s family “in accordance with his pleasure and will.” This is another place where the NIV translation may not be the best. Literally, Paul writes that we’ve been adopted “according to the good pleasure of his will.” Do you understand what God is saying here? He has adopted into His family because it gives Him pleasure. Can you believe that? God chooses me apart from anything I can do on my own, He gives me a destiny that includes being a part of His family and that gives Him pleasure? I understand how that gives me pleasure, but I’m totally blown away by the fact that it also gives God pleasure.
Now that’s a spiritual blessing!
3. God graced us so that He can receive glory.
to the praise of his glorious grace, which he has freely given us in the One he loves.
We’ve seen that God has chosen us and that he has predestined us to be part of His family. Verse 6 tells us how God does that. He does it through His grace. Again, we’ll be examining the concept of grace in much more detail in the weeks to come. But for right now, let’s just look at the two aspects of god’s grace that Paul writes about in this verse:
• The means of God’s grace - Jesus
We’ve now been through just six verses here in chapter 1. In just the first five verses, Paul has already used the phrases: “in Christ Jesus”,”in Christ”, “in Him” and “through Jesus Christ”. And here in verse 6, Paul now uses the phrase “in the One he loves” – obviously another reference to Jesus Christ.
By now it out to pretty obvious that the means of God’s grace is His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ and His death and resurrection. Once God decided before the creation of the world to choose us, He could have picked any means He wanted. He could have said I’ll choose everyone with hair, in which case I’d be in trouble. He could have said, I’ll choose the most talented, or the wealthiest or the most righteous. But He didn’t do that. He decided to choose those who would place their faith and trust in Jesus Christ. That’s the only means by which God makes His grace available to us.
• The measure of God’s grace
When Paul wrote that God has freely given us His grace, he actually used a verb form of the word that is translated “grace” throughout the New Testament. Perhaps the NLT best captures the meaning of this word with its translation:
So we praise God for the wonderful kindness he has poured out on us because we belong to his dearly loved Son.
I like the translation “poured out”. It gives us the sense that God didn’t hold anything back when He gave us His grace. It’s kind of like at the end of a football game when the winning team takes the Gatorade bucket and pours it over their coach. They don’t hold anything back. That’s the picture here of how God pours out His grace.
And why does he pour out His grace on us? So that He can get the glory. That is really the essence of every spiritual blessing that we have in Jesus in the heavenlies. Yes, we get a blessing and a benefit out of all of them. But their ultimate purpose is to bring glory back to the Giver of those blessings. That’s because every one of those blessings is totally and completely dependent on God and not on our own efforts. We certainly don’t earn them or deserve them, so when we get them the only thing we can do is give glory to God for them.
In a sense, this message this morning is primarily for those of us who have accepted Jesus Christ as our Forgiver and Master. And when we understand just how blessed we are to have been chosen by God to be holy and blameless through Jesus Christ; when we realize that our destiny is to be part of God’s family and that God takes pleasure in that; when we comprehend that God has poured our all His grace into our lives; how can we help but humble ourselves before Him and give Him praise and glory!
But maybe you’re here this morning and you’ve never made that decision. And maybe you’re asking this morning – “Am I one of God’s chosen?” I believe that the very fact that you’re asking that question is evidence that God is drawing you to Himself. If that’s the case, please don’t leave here to day before talking to me or Denny. Or you can just fill out the flap on the bulletin and let us know you’d like to discuss this some more. We’ll be happy to talk about how you can become part of God’s family, too.
