to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He made us accepted in the Beloved.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\nLet us look very closely and very carefully<\/span> at what is being said here.\u00a0 Please stay with me here, pay attention to details, and look at every word in that verse.\u00a0 I want to point out something that seems to be misquoted or misunderstood very often.<\/p>\nIt says “He chose us in Him…”<\/p>\n
The “He” in this verse is God the Father.\u00a0 And He (God) is choosing some people for something.<\/p>\n
Who did He chose?\u00a0 He chose those that are in Christ.<\/p>\n
What did He choose to do with them?\u00a0 He chose to make them holy and blameless<\/p>\n
The people that are in Christ are chosen to be recipients of some things from God.\u00a0 God will view them as holy and blameless, and He will consider them a part of His family, fully accepting them.\u00a0 God decided that He would do this before the foundation of the world.\u00a0 He made a decision that for anyone who is in Christ, He would treat them in this way.<\/p>\n
We know from many other places in the Bible (including later on in this chapter) that you only “get in Christ” by believing in Christ and receiving salvation.\u00a0 Anyone that has believed will become “in Christ.”\u00a0 Anyone that has not believed will not be “in Christ.”<\/p>\n
This passage tells us that anyone who is in Christ will receive some other benefits, and that God decided this long ago.\u00a0 Long ago, God chose to do some things for anyone that would choose to believe in Jesus.<\/p>\n
However, this passage does not anywhere say that people outside of Christ were chosen to be in Christ.<\/strong>\u00a0 It does not say that “He chose us to be<\/strong><\/span> in Him before the foundation of them world.”\u00a0 That is not in the text.\u00a0 This is where someone’s religious tradition will cause them to “fill in the blanks” and add things to the text that are not actually there.<\/p>\nThis passage does not say that individuals were chosen to be believers.\u00a0 Read it again slowly.\u00a0 It says that God chose to view those who are in Christ (believers) as holy and blameless.<\/p>\n
What this verse IS saying:<\/strong>\u00a0 God decided long ago that for anyone who is in Christ, He would make them holy and blameless.<\/p>\nWhat this verse IS NOT saying:<\/strong>\u00a0 God decided long ago to make some people be in Christ, but leave others out.<\/p>\nAgain, the people involved in this transaction are those that are already in Christ…those that put their faith in Jesus and received salvation.\u00a0 Those are the people that God has chosen to make holy and blameless.\u00a0 God did not choose to do this for people that are not in Christ.\u00a0 He chose to do it for people that are in Christ.<\/p>\n
Consider this imperfect analogy.\u00a0 Suppose a school teacher decides in advance to give a special reward to every student who brings in a completed homework assignment.\u00a0 That teacher has decided what will happen to the students, but it will be based on the choices that the students made the night before.\u00a0 All those who chose to do the homework will receive a special reward.\u00a0 But those who did not bring in their homework will not receive it.\u00a0 The teacher did not decide which individuals would do the homework, but the teacher did decide to bless anyone who did it.<\/p>\n
In the same way, God does not decide who will believe in Christ and receive salvation.\u00a0 But God does decide what happens to those that made the choice to believe.<\/p>\n
Because God is sovereign, He could have chosen people to be in Christ…He could have forced people to believe.\u00a0 If He wanted to do that, then He could have done that.\u00a0 God is the boss, and He gets to do whatever He wants to.\u00a0 But if He doesn’t decide to do that, then He is still the boss, and He can decide to let people choose for themselves.<\/p>\n
This verse is telling us that God decided in advance what He would do for those that would choose to put their faith in His son.\u00a0 That is a sovereign act by our sovereign God.\u00a0 He made this sovereign decision.<\/p>\n
It is up to you whether or not you are in Christ.\u00a0 If you choose to believe in Jesus as your savior, then you will be in Christ, and therefore you will receive the benefits that God decided about long ago before the foundation of the world.\u00a0 But if you choose to reject Jesus, then you will not receive those benefits.<\/p>\n
But do not let anyone use this passage tell you that God chooses some people to be saved, and some people to be condemned, with no regard to the choices of each individual in question.\u00a0 That position is not supported by this passage.\u00a0 In fact, it is saying the complete opposite.\u00a0 God does not choose individuals to believe in Jesus.\u00a0 Rather, He chooses what happens to those individuals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
What does it mean when the Bible tells us in Ephesians 1 that we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world?\u00a0 Does that mean that God picks people out for eternal life before they are even born?\u00a0 Does it mean that God looks at all of the people that will eventually live, and choose to save some<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[38,40],"tags":[29,19,21],"class_list":["post-1812","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-dictionary","category-the-deep-end-of-the-pool","tag-christian-dictionary","tag-gospel","tag-new-covenant"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4j58Y-te","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bornofspirit.net\/here\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bornofspirit.net\/here\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bornofspirit.net\/here\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bornofspirit.net\/here\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bornofspirit.net\/here\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1812"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/bornofspirit.net\/here\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1884,"href":"https:\/\/bornofspirit.net\/here\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1812\/revisions\/1884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bornofspirit.net\/here\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1812"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bornofspirit.net\/here\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1812"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bornofspirit.net\/here\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1812"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}