Never forget to live holy
While those near imponderables sit on shelves in our minds, we still have to get out of bed in the morning, eat our breakfast, make our lunch and do the things of life and living. A near endless discussion can center upon questions like the first half of this verse, but now let us move on to the second half:
4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. (Ephesians 1:4–ESV)
Always looking for my part of this program this second half of Paul’s fourth verse at first blush seems to say, “here is your part.” That forgets God’s role in our holiness. There is another natural, but false, reflex which says, “I can stop sinning any time I want.” We have a conscience, but that, too, was of God’s making. And like Paul says in Romans, “When I want to do good evil is right there beside me.”
We may rejoice that God has blessed us with spiritual blessings and has in some manner already given us our place in the heavenly realms. We also do best to rejoice that we are chosen and keep on rejoicing that we can through the strength of God do right. This part of the fourth verse is not my part to hoard and with a stamping foot declare, “I DID THESE GOOD DEEDS!”
We have a critical role to play in this, but the fall of sin was so devastating that we could never do our role except that God enabled it. We are still not robots; God does not make robots. We still have a role to play, a way to live, holiness to express, but the ability to do these things only comes from God.
Destined for the family
In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, (Ephesians 1:5–ESV)
Here is another of these most challenging concepts: predestination. This dovetails with what verse 4 says. Before the creation of the world, he made a list of those who would be adopted back into his family. That plops us squarely back into the following quandary: God did. I did. Which is it?
Let us consider how the logic of our minds work when we face things that are mutually exclusive. We easily grasp mutually exclusive option A OR option B. But we do quite poorly with mutually exclusive things that go: option A AND option B. The concept of the Trinity is one area we have long incorporated into such a paradigm. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit are three distinct beings, and yet they are one. Explanation after explanation is given to address that. Eventually, I think that we accept it with some fuzziness and leave it for later.
I think the same approach should be applied in this situation. We have roles, and God has made it plain that our choices do matter. Simultaneously, he has predestined us for certain things: holiness and godliness. Without his help, we can never live correctly.
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