The Church Formed By God - The Method – The Elect; & The Time – Eternity Past

"...just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love,..."  (Ephesians 1:4)

THE OBJECT—THE ELECT

The object of election is us, not everyone, but only those whom God chose, the saints and “faithful in Christ Jesus” (v. 1). Those whom God elects are those whom He has declared holy before the foundation of the world and who have identified with His Son Jesus Christ by faith. We need to be careful to think of this in purely and completely Biblical terms.  This is one area where our human thinking can get in the way and cause us to misunderstand what is being said here.  The Bible does not proclaim that God chose us because we believe, but that we believe because He chose us.  That is difficult for us to grasp, and many reject its truth because they think it makes men robots and destroys accountability and human responsibility.  The sad truth is that the rejection of this doctrine does precisely what these accuse the doctrine itself of doing.  The refusal to submit to the clearly defined terms of the Gospel demonstrates that one is not really willing to allow God to be God.  If we are to be the children of God, and be what He desires us to be, then we must be willing to allow Him to be the kind of God that the Scripture proclaims Him to be, and try and remake Him over in our own image and according to our own perception of what we think He must be like.

Being a Christian is having been chosen by God to be His child and to inherit all things through and with Jesus Christ.  That choosing is purely an expression of His good pleasure, and not at all a reflection of our own good pleasure.  That is, it is because god chose to do it, and not a response on His part to what we choose (or fail to choose) to do.

THE TIME—ETERNITY PAST

God elected us before the foundation of the world. Before the creation, the Fall, the covenants, or the law we were sovereignly predestined by God to be His. He designed the church, the Body of His Son, before the world began.  The main impact of this is to underscore that we had nothing whatsoever to do with the process of being chosen.  It was not according to our decision, nor was it merely a reflection of our own will.  We were chosen before our being, any aspect of it, ever came into play.

Because in God’s plan Christ was crucified for us “before the foundation of the world” (1 Pet. 1:20), we were designated for salvation by that same plan at that same time. It was then that our inheritance in God’s kingdom was determined (Matt. 25:34). We belonged to God before time began, and we will be His after time has long run its course. Our names as believers were “written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain” (Rev. 13:8; cf. 17:8).  Note that the same language is used to describe both “choosings”.  We were chosen in the same fashion as Christ was chosen.  It is the sovereign exercise of the will of god, independent of any choice and desire of man that is in view here.  To misunderstand this is to misunderstand the Gospel!

The glory of this is indescribable!  That the God of universe chose me is more than I can take in.  That He chose me apart from, and prior to any choice I made of him mind boggling!  How rich is the grace and mercy of god!  How unsearchable are His counsels and mysterious the workings of His plan.  All we can do is fall down on our faces and praise His matchless Name!