The Reason for Adoption - The good pleasure of His will,
Ephesians 1:5
“…having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,…”
There has to be a bottom line reason for anything. Nothing happens by chance in this universe, there is no true randomness to any happening. We serve a God Who; by His nature is a God of order and a God of power. He is unlimited in His knowledge and comprehensive in His awareness of things. Nothing, we are assured in the Bible, escapes His notice, and that long before it ever even happens! Because he “notices”, we must conclude that He is willing that it happen (whatever it may be). Were this not so, we would be forced to admit that there is something stronger than God in the universe, an obviously unacceptable conclusion.
The question then, is in what sense is He willing that these things happen and why?
The doctrine of election and adoption is a good place to start our thinking about these things. It is an area where many have very obvious difficulties and objections to the sovereign will of God as exercised in salvation. Yet, for most, they have never really thought through the alternatives. This is a perfect place for us to think them through a bit. Let’s do so.
Paul tells us that God elections and predestines the believer to adoption because of “the good pleasure of his will”. As always, we ought to be gin with an examination of the words themselves.
“According to” is a word we have seen recently, at the beginning of verse 4. There we said that it relates two things together in a causal relationship, one resting upon another. The chain of Paul’s thought thus runs from verse 3, the blessings we have in Christ, through election, predestination to adoption, here to the pleasure of His will. Why are we blessed in heavenly place in Christ? It is because of Election and predestination to adoption. Why are we elected and predestinated to adoption? It is because of the good pleasure of God’s will.
This causal chain is conclusive and definitive. Now, we need to note that nothing concerning our marvelous Heavenly Father is as simple as one, two three. God is a complex Being, in every sense of the word, and He does not do things for a single reason, just as you and I never do things for s single motivation. This is not meant to reduce Him to a single motivation, nor is it meant to exclude other motivations and/or factors in the effecting of salvation in the lives of believers. This is a trap that many fall into. They make one motivation or purpose of God into the only motivation or purpose of God in His actions and in so doing, make him a simple Being and do violence to His character.
What we need to see here is that there is a chain of argument presented by Paul in this passage. That chain is clear and it is needful for us to grapple with it. We don’t get to ignore it or discount it because we don’t like it. Nor do we get to interpret it anyway we wish to interpret it to make it fit our preconceived ideas about what it is, one way or the other. That is simply not allowed. This is God’s Word, not ours.
“Good pleasure” is a Greek word that means: “good will, pleasure, favor; desire, purpose, or choice”. It is not here used in the sense of kindly or friendly feeling, as Luke 2:14; Philippians 1:15, but because it pleased Him, see Luke 10:21; Matthew 11:26. The other sense, however, is included and implied, and is expressed by “in love”. This expresses the idea that it was the purpose of God, His desire to do as He wished, that drove His decision. He did it (election and predestination to adoption) because it was what He wished to do, because it served His purpose to do it.
This is not so capricious as to be described simply as “He elected and predestinated because He wished to”. Rather, we should see that it indicates that God chose to do so because He had a plan to accomplish, and this suited His plan. God didn’t act because He felt like acting; that is far to human and is not consistent with His nature as a deliberate and intelligent God Who acts according to His nature. He acted because it was what He chose to do, and He chose it because it was what satisfied and furthered His plan.
We’ll discuss this more next time…