Ephesians 1:3–14, Part 3
Whether you are the kid at recess who gets chosen last for the kickball team, or whether you are the adult who doesn’t get chosen for a promotion, a job, a contest, it can be very difficult emotionally when we are not chosen.
When I submitted book proposals, I experienced the empty feeling of not being chosen. Years ago I applied for teaching positions at local colleges, and I wasn’t chosen. It feels awful.
As we continue studying Ephesians 1:3–14, Paul is eulogizing, praising God for the spiritual blessings he has lavished on us, and in verse 4, Paul writes,
“For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love…”
He chose us. God chose us. It can be quite difficult whether no matter what age you are, when you are not chosen.
But know this, God chooses us. God looks at you and says “I choose you. I have always chosen you because I love you.” See those two important words at the end of verse 4. “In love.” God chooses you and me because he loves us. Praise God!
You might feel passed over, unseen, unheard, neglected, as many of us do feel by the humans in our lives. But not by God. God chooses you, and he always has, because he loves you.
Notice two other words in that sentence, “in him.” He chose us in him. Paul is saying that God chose us in Christ. In verse 3, we are blessed with every spiritual blessing…in Christ. In fact, Paul repeats that one phrase over and over throughout this section, “in Christ” (or its variations: “in him,” “through Jesus Christ,” “in the One”), a phrase that indicates how and by whom and through whom God has chosen us.
Our chosenness has to do with Jesus. The birth, life, ministry, teaching, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus, have everything to do with how God has chosen us. This is vital. Because it goes to show us that God is not like the kids at recess choosing who gets to be on the kickball team. God is not like the organization choosing who gets hired, and who doesn’t. God is not like the culture critic who says “I like their art, their book, their food, but not yours.” Some Christians think of God like that, though. As if he is a divine kickball team captain in the sky, picking some people for his team, and essentially condemning the others to separation from God.
But that is not what is going on in this passage. That would be a very individualistic view of God’s work of choosing: “I choose him, her, but not that guy though.” Or “I choose 75% of people living in that country, but less than 1% in another. And those tribal people living in the Amazon for centuries, never having contact with the outside world…forget them.”
That’s not God.
Instead, Paul clearly says that God chooses…in Christ. What does that mean though? I disagree with the Christians who believe it an individualistic choosing. My opinion, and feel free to disagree with me, is that Paul is describing a corporate choosing. Let me illustrate.
In the Old Testament, God chose the people of Israel to be his people right? He chose a group, a family. It was a corporate choosing. He established a covenant with them. He also embedded in that covenant a plan for non-Israelites could be join in. He also showed the people of Israel how their covenant was grounded in the original covenant with Abraham, whose family, God said, would be a blessing to the whole world.
Israel understood their relationship with God through the lens of this covenant. It was a group agreement. But let me ask you this about their group agreement: Did that covenant mean that every single biological Israelite was guaranteed to partake of the covenant relationship with God, just because of their biology? Had God established an agreement that was simply ethnic?
Or did faith and life choices have something to do with it? Yes, faith and life choices had everything to do with this arrangement. God chose Israel as a collective, but each individual Israelite still had to choose him. Many did not.
Likewise, God chooses us in Christ. There is a new covenant in Christ. The point is that God is not choosing individuals, saying randomly, “You’re in, but you over there, you’re out.” Instead, he chooses all in Christ. “For God so loved the world”. Or as Paul will write in 1 Timothy 2:3-4, “This is good, and pleases God our Savior, who wants all people to be saved and to come to a knowledge of the truth.”
God chooses all in Christ.
Engaging Scripture 