Graduate 176: Advent & Ephesians, Day 4
"...just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him."
This is one of the more controversial passages in the Scriptures. It is one of the two main texts that people go to to defend the idea of predestination. Predestination, for many, has come to mean that God chooses, before the creation of the world, who will be saved--in other words, who will go to heaven. This is often interpreted as necessitating, as a corollary, so-called double-predestination, which is the idea that God also chooses, before the creation of the world, who will not be saved--that is, who will go to hell.
For some, the idea that God would make such a choice calls into question His goodness and justice. If God decides, before the creation of the world and, so, quite apart from the choices of the individual human beings, who will enjoy eternal bliss and who will suffer eternal torment, then He cannot possibly be a good God. Some will use this interpretation as grounds for rejecting belief in the biblical God. Others will simply reject the idea of predestination.
Another way in which predestination seems to raise doubts about the goodness of God has to do with its apparent incompatibility with free will. Again, if God chooses who will go to heaven and hell--who will be saved--then human beings seem to have no role to play in the salvation process. The choice to receive salvation in Jesus Christ is not actually available to anyone, since the sovereign God has already decided who is in and who is out.
Having raised these issues now, I am going to do very little in the way of trying to resolve these doubts or worries. I am willing to allow that there are legitimate questions here, but I want to draw our attention to some things that I think we tend to forget when we get to arguing about these issues. First, predestination is a biblical doctrine. Now, by 'predestination,' I mean just what Paul says in this verse: "that God chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him." Whatever further interpretive issues may arise--however we may try to cache out the idea of predestination and fill in the details, the basic teaching is biblical and therefore cannot be excised from a sound biblical Christian theology. Second, Paul's reaction to this truth about predestination is not skepticism or speculation or puzzlement or doubt. His reaction is praise.
Remember, the whole sentence, up to this point, runs like this: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him."
Now I grant that this point should, perhaps, not be taken as definitive. After all, Paul might have had a vicious streak and delighted in the thought of some people being predestined to heaven and others being predestined to hell. There have, unfortunately, been Christians throughout history who did seem to have such an attitude. But Paul doesn't strike me as one of those. In the book of Romans, in the same chapter where Paul talks about predestination in that letter, he writes:
"I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites..." (Romans 9:1-4a)
Paul is describing the sorrow and grief that he feels on behalf of those Israelites who have rejected Jesus Christ. He is not insensitive to the situation of the unsaved. In fact, it is exactly their condition that spurs him on to evangelistic and apostolic work. We should keep this in mind when we look at v. 4 of Ephesians 1. Paul is not an insensitive brute, but when he is confronted with the reality of God's choice and predestination, his reaction is not to question or doubt or rage. Rather, his reaction is to praise.
Is Paul being naive here? Is he just failing to connect the dots? Or maybe he understands the goodness and the graciousness and the character of God even better than you or I do. At the very least, there is a challenge here. How well do we know this God of whom we speak? It may wind up being the case that predestination is just one of those things that we need to trust God about. Maybe we'll never understand it and just have to trust in God's goodness.
But I do think there are some things that we can say on this point--and this will be the focus of my concluding remarks. I think we can say some things about this idea of predestination and I think we need to--again, because Paul seems to have understood something about God that prompted him to praise and exaltation. It did not leave him ambivalent or simply trusting in God's goodness absent-understanding. So what is going on with this doctrine of predestination?
Here it is not clear to me that I am following the traditional Calvinist line, and that is fine with me. Hopefully what I say can be recognized as biblical. Many people, unfortunately, have this idea that God's choice rules out our having any role to play in the relevant events in our life and in history. But that is not, I think, what Paul is talking about here. Rather, what he is emphasizing is that God's choice rules out any grounds for our meriting or earning the grace that we have received. Paul is not praising God because God did everything and we did nothing. Rather, Paul is praising God because God chose to confer on Paul and the other Christians what they could not earn or merit. Paul will sound this same note in Ephesians 2:8-9, where he writes, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast."
When Paul reflects on his own person, character, accomplishments, history, etc., he recognizes nothing in virtue of which God could be said to be justified in conferring grace upon him. There is nothing about Paul that would make him the rational or logical choice to receive God's blessing. Why then does Paul receive those blessings in such incredible abundance? Just because God has chosen to give them to him. All the credit lies with God.
This is not a new idea. Back when God freed the nation of Israel from slavery in Egypt and was preparing to lead them into the promised land, he reminded them: "The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the LORD loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the LORD brought you out by a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt." (Deuteronomy 7:7-8) God did not choose the people of Israel because they were a great nation or particularly deserving or particularly devout. He chose them because of His love and because He had bound Himself to them.
In the same way, when Paul considers his own salvation and the salvation of his fellow Christians, all he can do is marvel at God's goodness, graciousness, generosity, abundance, and overflowing kindness. How amazing that God would choose to save me--and it must have been just God choosing me, because there's nothing about me that could merit such a choice.
When people tend to emphasize God's sovereignty, I think they probably also tend to make the mistake of thinking that if human beings play any role, then they must merit something. But that is simply not the case. If three men undertake a dangerous mission to rescue a fourth man from certain death, that fourth man is not honored for taking part in his own rescue. That fourth man does not deserve praise because he allowed the other three to rescue him--even if it is the case that, had he refused help, then he would have died. Certainly his accepting help played some role in his rescue, but it is not grounds for saying that he deserved honors as a hero. Similarly, human choice does play a role in salvation. But that does not contradict Paul's point about how all the credit is due to God. When people forget this and think that doing equals earning, then they start to say things like, human choice has no role in salvation, which I take to be just wrong. Now this doesn't solve all the problems. After all, one may still worry that God's choosing might still rule out free will, but the point that I want to make is that we need to focus on what Paul is saying and not on what he is not saying. Paul is prompted to praise because he has been reminded of God's overwhelming graciousness and generosity. As we meditate on that same graciousness and generosity, we should also be moved to praise and thanksgiving.
This reflection has gone much longer than I thought it would; and I've talked a lot more about the 'controversial' issue than I originally intended to. But hopefully you are seeing how this doctrine of predestination really is something to be excited about and a good reason for giving God praise and honor. But, of course, these should not be our only reactions. God did not just choose us to choose us. He chose us with a purpose in mind: "that we should be holy and blameless before Him." We have a calling. We are the recipient of boundless blessing, but that blessing comes in the context of a relationship with God and can only be fully enjoyed by those whose character has been formed in the appropriate way. We are called to be free of sin and blemish. We are also called to live a life set apart for God and His work. This is the highest and greatest possible calling that we could receive. And God has conferred it upon us by His grace and goodness. Blessed be God!
I'll wrap this up just by quoting a passage from Francis Foulkes commentary. He makes basically the same point that I have made, but much more succinctly:
"This doctrine of election, or predestination, is not raised as a subject of controversy or speculation. It is not set in opposition to the self-evident fact of human free will. It involves a paradox that the New Testament does not seek to resolve, and that our finite minds cannot fathom. Paul emphasizes both the sovereign purpose of God and our free will. He took the gospel of grace and offered it to all. Then to those who had accepted the gospel he set forward the doctrine of election for two reasons, both of which we find linked similarly together in John 15:16; Romans 8:29; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; 2 Timothy 1:9 and Peter 1:2. Firstly, Christians need to realize that their faith rests completely on the work of God and not on the unsteady foundation of anything in themselves. It is all the Lord's work, and in accordance with his [will], a plan that reaches back before the foundation of the world. There is, therefore, no place for human boasting. Secondly, God has chosen us that we should be holy and blameless before him (cf. 5:27 and Col. 1:22)." (pp.)
Let's remind ourselves of both of these important truths during this Christmas season.
--
God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.
This is one of the more controversial passages in the Scriptures. It is one of the two main texts that people go to to defend the idea of predestination. Predestination, for many, has come to mean that God chooses, before the creation of the world, who will be saved--in other words, who will go to heaven. This is often interpreted as necessitating, as a corollary, so-called double-predestination, which is the idea that God also chooses, before the creation of the world, who will not be saved--that is, who will go to hell.
For some, the idea that God would make such a choice calls into question His goodness and justice. If God decides, before the creation of the world and, so, quite apart from the choices of the individual human beings, who will enjoy eternal bliss and who will suffer eternal torment, then He cannot possibly be a good God. Some will use this interpretation as grounds for rejecting belief in the biblical God. Others will simply reject the idea of predestination.
Another way in which predestination seems to raise doubts about the goodness of God has to do with its apparent incompatibility with free will. Again, if God chooses who will go to heaven and hell--who will be saved--then human beings seem to have no role to play in the salvation process. The choice to receive salvation in Jesus Christ is not actually available to anyone, since the sovereign God has already decided who is in and who is out.
Having raised these issues now, I am going to do very little in the way of trying to resolve these doubts or worries. I am willing to allow that there are legitimate questions here, but I want to draw our attention to some things that I think we tend to forget when we get to arguing about these issues. First, predestination is a biblical doctrine. Now, by 'predestination,' I mean just what Paul says in this verse: "that God chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him." Whatever further interpretive issues may arise--however we may try to cache out the idea of predestination and fill in the details, the basic teaching is biblical and therefore cannot be excised from a sound biblical Christian theology. Second, Paul's reaction to this truth about predestination is not skepticism or speculation or puzzlement or doubt. His reaction is praise.
Remember, the whole sentence, up to this point, runs like this: "Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him."
Now I grant that this point should, perhaps, not be taken as definitive. After all, Paul might have had a vicious streak and delighted in the thought of some people being predestined to heaven and others being predestined to hell. There have, unfortunately, been Christians throughout history who did seem to have such an attitude. But Paul doesn't strike me as one of those. In the book of Romans, in the same chapter where Paul talks about predestination in that letter, he writes:
"I am telling the truth in Christ, I am not lying, my conscience bearing me witness in the Holy Spirit, that I have great sorrow and unceasing grief in my heart. For I could wish that I myself were accursed, separated from Christ for the sake of my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites..." (Romans 9:1-4a)
Paul is describing the sorrow and grief that he feels on behalf of those Israelites who have rejected Jesus Christ. He is not insensitive to the situation of the unsaved. In fact, it is exactly their condition that spurs him on to evangelistic and apostolic work. We should keep this in mind when we look at v. 4 of Ephesians 1. Paul is not an insensitive brute, but when he is confronted with the reality of God's choice and predestination, his reaction is not to question or doubt or rage. Rather, his reaction is to praise.
Is Paul being naive here? Is he just failing to connect the dots? Or maybe he understands the goodness and the graciousness and the character of God even better than you or I do. At the very least, there is a challenge here. How well do we know this God of whom we speak? It may wind up being the case that predestination is just one of those things that we need to trust God about. Maybe we'll never understand it and just have to trust in God's goodness.
But I do think there are some things that we can say on this point--and this will be the focus of my concluding remarks. I think we can say some things about this idea of predestination and I think we need to--again, because Paul seems to have understood something about God that prompted him to praise and exaltation. It did not leave him ambivalent or simply trusting in God's goodness absent-understanding. So what is going on with this doctrine of predestination?
Here it is not clear to me that I am following the traditional Calvinist line, and that is fine with me. Hopefully what I say can be recognized as biblical. Many people, unfortunately, have this idea that God's choice rules out our having any role to play in the relevant events in our life and in history. But that is not, I think, what Paul is talking about here. Rather, what he is emphasizing is that God's choice rules out any grounds for our meriting or earning the grace that we have received. Paul is not praising God because God did everything and we did nothing. Rather, Paul is praising God because God chose to confer on Paul and the other Christians what they could not earn or merit. Paul will sound this same note in Ephesians 2:8-9, where he writes, "For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God; not as a result of works, that no one should boast."
When Paul reflects on his own person, character, accomplishments, history, etc., he recognizes nothing in virtue of which God could be said to be justified in conferring grace upon him. There is nothing about Paul that would make him the rational or logical choice to receive God's blessing. Why then does Paul receive those blessings in such incredible abundance? Just because God has chosen to give them to him. All the credit lies with God.
This is not a new idea. Back when God freed the nation of Israel from slavery in Egypt and was preparing to lead them into the promised land, he reminded them: "The LORD did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the LORD loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the LORD brought you out by a mighty hand, and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt." (Deuteronomy 7:7-8) God did not choose the people of Israel because they were a great nation or particularly deserving or particularly devout. He chose them because of His love and because He had bound Himself to them.
In the same way, when Paul considers his own salvation and the salvation of his fellow Christians, all he can do is marvel at God's goodness, graciousness, generosity, abundance, and overflowing kindness. How amazing that God would choose to save me--and it must have been just God choosing me, because there's nothing about me that could merit such a choice.
When people tend to emphasize God's sovereignty, I think they probably also tend to make the mistake of thinking that if human beings play any role, then they must merit something. But that is simply not the case. If three men undertake a dangerous mission to rescue a fourth man from certain death, that fourth man is not honored for taking part in his own rescue. That fourth man does not deserve praise because he allowed the other three to rescue him--even if it is the case that, had he refused help, then he would have died. Certainly his accepting help played some role in his rescue, but it is not grounds for saying that he deserved honors as a hero. Similarly, human choice does play a role in salvation. But that does not contradict Paul's point about how all the credit is due to God. When people forget this and think that doing equals earning, then they start to say things like, human choice has no role in salvation, which I take to be just wrong. Now this doesn't solve all the problems. After all, one may still worry that God's choosing might still rule out free will, but the point that I want to make is that we need to focus on what Paul is saying and not on what he is not saying. Paul is prompted to praise because he has been reminded of God's overwhelming graciousness and generosity. As we meditate on that same graciousness and generosity, we should also be moved to praise and thanksgiving.
This reflection has gone much longer than I thought it would; and I've talked a lot more about the 'controversial' issue than I originally intended to. But hopefully you are seeing how this doctrine of predestination really is something to be excited about and a good reason for giving God praise and honor. But, of course, these should not be our only reactions. God did not just choose us to choose us. He chose us with a purpose in mind: "that we should be holy and blameless before Him." We have a calling. We are the recipient of boundless blessing, but that blessing comes in the context of a relationship with God and can only be fully enjoyed by those whose character has been formed in the appropriate way. We are called to be free of sin and blemish. We are also called to live a life set apart for God and His work. This is the highest and greatest possible calling that we could receive. And God has conferred it upon us by His grace and goodness. Blessed be God!
I'll wrap this up just by quoting a passage from Francis Foulkes commentary. He makes basically the same point that I have made, but much more succinctly:
"This doctrine of election, or predestination, is not raised as a subject of controversy or speculation. It is not set in opposition to the self-evident fact of human free will. It involves a paradox that the New Testament does not seek to resolve, and that our finite minds cannot fathom. Paul emphasizes both the sovereign purpose of God and our free will. He took the gospel of grace and offered it to all. Then to those who had accepted the gospel he set forward the doctrine of election for two reasons, both of which we find linked similarly together in John 15:16; Romans 8:29; 2 Thessalonians 2:13; 2 Timothy 1:9 and Peter 1:2. Firstly, Christians need to realize that their faith rests completely on the work of God and not on the unsteady foundation of anything in themselves. It is all the Lord's work, and in accordance with his [will], a plan that reaches back before the foundation of the world. There is, therefore, no place for human boasting. Secondly, God has chosen us that we should be holy and blameless before him (cf. 5:27 and Col. 1:22)." (pp.)
Let's remind ourselves of both of these important truths during this Christmas season.
--
God is in this place,
And that reality, seen and understood by the grace of God in Christ Jesus through the work of the Holy Spirit, makes all the difference in the world.
posted by Metaphysician_delta | 10:00 AM
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