He Chose Us, Not We Chose Him

Passage: Ephesians 1:4

4just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love,   

Words are important.  They make sentences and those sentences carry meanings that are significant and that we need to pay attention to and ponder to be sure that we understand. The phrase before us is one example of that importance.

The verb “chose” is from the Greek word “eklegomai” which, itself comes from two other Greek word meaning “out of” and “to speak or call”.  Put together they mean to call out of, pick out, or speak to with an aim of calling out of.  It is not a reference to “calling out” in the sense of speaking out loud, or crying out.  That is another word entirely.  Rather, it speaks of the use of the authority of the caller to “call out” or order the “callees” from out of a place or a state.  In the generic language of the day it was even used to refer to the levying of taxes by the state on those under their authority. 

The tense of the verb indicates a past action In which the action is completely finished at the point of the reference to it.  It has no view as to how or why that action took place, it simply comments that it did, in fact take place and that the action was done in the past.  Further, it is in the “Middle” voice which, in Greek, is often used to “reflect” action back on the doer.  It lends the idea of “calling out” or “selecting” the objects of election by God Himself.  The point here is that God did not use an intermediary agent to do the selecting.  He did it himself.  He did not simply allow the natural course of things to move along, seeing what would happen and then lend His “imprimatur” to it and affirm that it would happen, calling it His will.  No, not at all.

Rather, this phrase would lead us to believe that God acted to call out His saints Himself, of His own will, and by His own action.

Further, we noted that his is past tense here.  This choosing occurred in the past to the writers of the passage at the least, and certainly to you and I.  We cannot, from this passage, imply that this choosing took place in eternity past, though there are certainly other passages in the Bible that speak to the “when” of this act of choosing.  The point we ought to dwell on is that this choosing was done before we had anything to do with affecting it one way or another.  It does not good to think that God simply looked down the corridors of time and saw what we would do, and choose us based on what we chose to do.  That is not God choosing, that is God endorsing or agreeing, or any other like idea, but it is not God choosing for Himself, those upon whom He would shower these great spiritual blessings.

We noted in an earlier devotion that there is a exclusive idea here as well.  God chose us, as opposed to them.  “Us” is in the accusative and stands as the object of the verb.  God chose us, we didn’t choose ourselves.  That would be akin to saying that ball threw itself across the room.  The grammar of the sentence and the simple logic of the situation spoken of doesn’t allow for us to be the ones doing the choosing here.  It was God Who chose, and nor we ourselves.

This does not, as many would assert, destroy human accountability.  Rather, it establishes it all the more firmly, because the whole matter is rooted in the decree of a sovereign God who has, on His own authority declared who is accountable to Him and how that accounting will be handled.  There is no unsure quality here.  All of salvation is rooted in the firm and secure purpose of the greatest force in the universe – the True and Living God!