Chosen before the Foundation
of the World

A sermon From Ephesians 1:1-14
by Pastor Andrew J. Webb

NKJ Ephesians 1:1 Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, To the saints who are in Ephesus, and faithful in Christ Jesus:
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
3 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,
4 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,
5 having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will,
6 to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved.
7 In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace
8 which He made to abound toward us in all wisdom and prudence,
9 having made known to us the mystery of His will, according to His good pleasure which He purposed in Himself,
10 that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth -- in Him.
11 In Him also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will,
12 that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of His glory.
13 In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,
14 who is the guarantee of our inheritance until the redemption of the purchased possession, to the praise of His glory.

No doubt some might say right now, "how typical, the first worship service of a Reformed Church, and what does the preacher decide to preach on – PREDESTINATION of COURSE!" and to add to the last sermon these people heard was also on the subject of election.

Well it's true, I can't deny it, as we look at these verses, we are going to be discussing the subject of election, because that doctrine is clearly before us as the Apostle Paul writes to the church about the glories of God's redeeming work. But I decided long ago that when we began meeting together as a church, I wanted to preach through Ephesians, and not because Predestination immediately comes into the foreground when you preach through Ephesians. Rather I wanted to go through Ephesians with you, because no other letter in the New Testament addresses the subject of the church, and the calling and nature of the members of the church quite as thoroughly or succinctly as Ephesians does. In this letter Paul beautiful defines for us just exactly what is meant by the church of Jesus Christ, which he calls His Body in verse 23 of this chapter. So therefore if we have begun to strive to become a true church of Jesus Christ, and I pray that goal is the desire of all your hearts as it is the desire of mine, then there is no better portion of the Bible for us to look into in order to be guided in making that desire a reality.

The first thing we need to realize, and perhaps this is the hardest lesson for any Christian to learn, is that ultimately all of what we are attempting to do here is grounded in the sovereignty of God. It is God who has elected, it is God who has redeemed, and it is God who is gathering his people, and it is God who is building His church. The question we need to concern ourselves with therefore, is not "how can we build our church for God", but rather how can we be used as servants by God as He builds His Church. As Pastor Braden reminded us last week in discussing election, "So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy." (Romans 9:16)

But perhaps you're thinking even now, "but Paul isn't discussing building churches in that verse, he's talking about election. He's talking about God saving people" Ah, but you see the process of salvation and building the church are one and the same thing! What is the building of the church but the application of redemption?

Sinners are saved through faith in Jesus Christ, but they aren't saved to wander alone by themselves, rather God's intention was that his elect would grafted into the body of Christ, the Church. And that there they would not remain newborns, but rather that they would grow in grace and in the knowledge of the Lord. That is why Paul writes in verse 10 that it was always God's intention "that in the dispensation of the fullness of the times He might gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and which are on earth -- in Him."

Now don't get me wrong salvation is a personal thing. Entire nations are not saved, individuals from every tribe, and tongue, race, and creed are saved. You cannot be saved by the faithfulness of your parents, or even because you are a member of the visible church. Rather you yourself must come to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ for without that faith, you do not have the redemption, that forgiveness of sins and adoption that Paul speaks of here. But so often our focus as Christians stops right there – at the moment when individuals are saved. We are interested in getting people saved, as though that were an end in and of itself. But that’s not the end. It's just the beginning.

Imagine if you will that you sat down to write the biography of some notable individual like Winston Churchill and that in your first chapter you discussed his mothers pregnancy and in the second chapter you discussed Churchill's birth, and at the end of that chapter you wrote THE END. Now do you think anyone would consider that to be an adequate summary of the life of Churchill??? And yet the bizarre thing is that sometimes we evangelicals seem to consider being born again all there is to the story. In fact, we'll even gather round to share with others how we were saved, but we are far less prone to gather round to share how God is continuing His work of redemption in us. How he is sanctifying us, making us holy, conforming us to the image of Christ. How we are becoming functioning mature members of the Body. And perhaps, just perhaps, that is part of the reason why there is so much spiritual immaturity in the Evangelical church.

For Paul tells you here in verse 4 that it was God's intention in electing you that you would be "holy and without blame before Him in love" This is His intention in saving you, as he says later in Chapter 5 "Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish." If you've been saved then God saved you that ultimately you might be part of the spotless bride of Christ. Now that refining process that has been begun in you, will not be finished this side of Glory. But rest assured, you have been given the Holy Spirit to indwell you as a seal, a pledge, a guarantee that the process that has been begun in you will be finished. And it is the Holy Spirit dwelling within you who is conforming you to the image of Christ.

So please, as we read Ephesians together, keep that in mind. That you have been saved by God, purchased at such a cost, not to be merely some sort of self-contained, autonomous, Christian unit. But that you have been grafted into the body of Christ, the Church, the covenant Community, and that it is God's intention that there you would do good works, that you would grow in grace, that you would grow in knowledge, that you would raise up godly children – and I don't just mean your own. When we baptize a child we ask the following question of the members of the congregation: "Do you as a congregation undertake the responsibility of assisting the parents in the Christian nurture of this child?" Be always thinking therefore of how you can go about doing that, and how you can go about setting an example for those children.

Now as we look at these verses with that in mind, I would hope that the word US as opposed to just YOU, in all these verses would leap out at you. Paul is writing to believers, to the church, to the elect who have become a part of the Body of Christ. These are the people who are the recipients of the blessings spoken of here: holiness, sonship, forgiveness of sins, and eternal life. This is the blessed inheritance that we gain in Christ. And what is the source for these blessings? The ELECTING LOVE OF GOD!

Did God choose to bless his people because they merited that blessing? Or because they loved him so much? Not AT ALL! In Chapter 2 verse 1 Paul tells us that we were saved by God even though we were rebels sinners, disobedient, and full of lust. And that far from loving God, we took our marching orders from the prince of the power of the air, that is the Devil. No friends, as John says in 1 John 4:19 "We love Him because He first loved us."

Think about that amazing love and mercy of the Father, he loved you even though you despised Him! And He loved you so much that He was thinking about you, choosing you to be His, from all eternity. Before He created the Stars, He was Choosing you. Before He Created the Earth and everything in it, He was planning your redemption. He did all of that out of His love, and how great a love that was when we know that He did that knowing that it would involve us torturing and putting his Only Begotten Son the Lord Jesus Christ to death on a Cross. And incidentally, that should forever put an end to any ridiculous theology that would put the value of a tree or a dolphin higher than that of a human being. Jesus Christ did not suffer on the cross and endure that terrible separation from the father to redeem whales.

God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit entered into a Covenant of Redemption and in that Covenant made before the creation, God gave a people to his Son and because they are included in it, because they are in Christ as their head and representative, they receive the gift of the Holy Spirit and all the benefits of Christ's redemption. This people that God gave to Christ are the elect, His Sheep for Him he laid down His Life on the Cross. That should be a source of great comfort and confidence to you, that the Father chose you in particular, and that Christ laid down his life for you. Listen to the words of Christ in John 10:27:

"My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me. "And I give them eternal life, and they shall never perish; neither shall anyone snatch them out of My hand. "My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of My Father's hand."

That is why we were chosen in Him. We are His Sheep, He is our Shepherd. He is our Head, our Representative, and our salvation is in Him. As Charles Hodge put it: "God purposed to save men in Christ, He elected them in him to salvation."

What all of that means is that there are no accidents here, nothing left up to chance, God's plans are certain and sure. God the father has not been lurching along from accident to accident throughout the course of history. First creating the world and then being taken by surprise when Adam fell in the Garden, then hastily deciding to fix things through some sort of "Plan B" and hoping this plan of redemption wasn't thwarted by some unforeseen human decision. As an aside what sometimes surprises me more than the fact that some men insist on creating that kind of mythical scenario where God isn't sovereign in redemption, is the fact that they find comfort in it. I don't know about you but the misguided idea that God isn't sovereign wouldn't produce any comfort at all in me, quite the opposite. If I thought that redemption was precariously balanced on the actions of sinful and fallen men rather than based in the electing love of God, I'd never have a moments peace.

Thankfully, that isn't what Paul tells us in these passages, there is no hint of chance here as Paul discusses redemption. He tells us that our salvation came about because the Father chose us in Christ before the foundation of the World, that we were predestined to the adoption as sons in Christ Jesus, and that not because of anything we did but because of God's good pleasure. In other words, because it pleased God to save us. Paul speaks here of a perfect plan being brought to fruition in the "fullness of time." To be able to introduce any hint that the outcome of all this was not fixed and certain from before creation, is to ignore the clear meaning of the scripture at this point.

What Paul is giving us then is almost analogous to building a house. God laid down your blueprints showing what you were to be before the foundation of the world, and now he is in the process of building that house, and you know that any task that God takes up he certainly completes. But God doesn't just want a house, sure that is what he is building, but the purpose of building a house isn't merely to have a house. It is in order to have a dwelling place that one builds a house, and you have been built to the glory of God in order to be the dwelling place of the Holy Spirit. A temple made without hands.

One can take that analogy further and say that God isn't just building a number of separate dwelling places, but rather that He is building a city, a shining city on a hill, that is His church.

But before we close we should deal with a couple of common complaints about this passage:

The first is that if what Paul says is true and we are chosen before the foundation of the world and predestined to adoption as Sons, why bother to preach the gospel at all? I mean won't every elect person be converted anyway?

ANSWERS:

1) God uses men to bring his electing purposes to their proper conclusion, sure as it says in Luke 19:40 God could raise up stones to preach the Gospel of the Messiah Jesus Christ – but he didn't choose to do it that way

2) It is only because of this assurance that we CAN preach the gospel. Who can reach the dead??? Gerstner example

3) Human responsibility: Eph. 1:13 In Him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, YOU MUST BELIEVE!

The Second is that if we believe Paul that our salvation finds it source in God's electing Love and not in our own ongoing works of righteousness, then what practical impetus to Holiness will we have? If we believe in election won't we just feel free to be as wicked as we want? "Saved by Grace, O Blessed condition, sin all I want and still get remission!"

This runs against the very purpose of election which is our holiness, for we read in Titus 2:14 that Christ "gave Himself for us, that He might redeem us from every lawless deed and purify for Himself His own special people, zealous for good works."

Those who do live being as wicked as they want have no right to believe that they are actually elect, for our election ultimately leads to greater and greater holiness, not wickedness. To be wicked and opposed to God and his commands is to still be in your unregenerate state. To quote Calvin:

"This leads us to conclude, that holiness, purity, and every excellence that is found among men, are the fruit of election; so that once more Paul expressly puts aside every consideration of merit. If God had foreseen in us anything worthy of election, it would have been stated in language the very opposite of what is here employed, and which plainly means that all our holiness and purity of life flow from the election of God. How comes it then that some men are religious, and live in the fear of God, while others give themselves up without reserve to all manner of wickedness? If Paul

may be believed, the only reason is, that the latter retain their natural disposition, and the former have been chosen to holiness. The cause, certainly, is not later than the effect. Election, therefore, does not depend on the righteousness of works, of which Paul here declares that it is the cause.

We learn also from these words, that election gives no occasion to licentiousness, or to the blasphemy of wicked men who say, "Let us live in any manner we please; for, if we have been elected, we cannot perish." Paul tells them plainly, that they have no right to separate holiness of life from the grace of election; for

29 For whom He foreknew, He also predestined to be conformed to the image of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many brethren.
30 Moreover whom He predestined, these He also called; whom He called, these He also justified; and whom He justified, these He also glorified.

Therefore Christians, live in keeping with your election, knowing that its end is that you might be holy and without blame before Him.

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