The fourth verse of Ephesians 1 does not start a new sentence but carries the teaching of spiritual blessings and the heavenly realm to greater depths. The next lessons do not swim to the shallow end of doctrine’s pool. We will have to stretch our swimmer’s arms hard to unpack what things Paul teaches as we continue. I have coupled our verses to the 3rd verse on which we spent the last two weeks. It fits better to read them together.
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, 6 to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved. (Ephesians 1:4-6–ESV)
The choosing
The choosing is the first part of our deeper swim, and check out these phrases.
“…he chose us in him before the foundation of the world…” (ESV)
“…chose us in him before the creation of the world…” (NIV)
Paul teaches us that God did some picking, some choosing. Let us look at a couple of questions.
Question 1: What was he picking? Strawberries? Nope. People. Even more specifically: us, Christians.
Question 2: When did he do this picking? He did the picking before he made the world.
Those questions scream some things at me:
- God knew the choice Adam and Eve would make.
- God foreknew that large swaths of humanity would reject him and still created us.
From inside of me come some other smirk-like statements:
- Getting into heaven is like winning a sweepstake!
- The bad of creation outweighs the good of it!
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