Who did the Choosing?

Ephesians 1:4-5

When Jan and I began to date, she was still in high school and I was back from the army; I was working nights at a place called Corn Products and attending Del Mar College.  I viewed myself as the more experienced one and Jan as the sweet high school girl who was helping me pass English.  One night, she told me “I’m going to chase you till you catch me,” and I thought to myself, what is that all about?  I often wonder who chose whom; I did ask her to be my wife, but in the scheme of things, who did the selecting?  When it comes to our relationship with Jesus Christ, it should be very clear about who did the selecting, verse four states, “even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.”

When I ask Jan to be my wife I had already chosen her, but it was by her choice to reject or receive my invitation, and that same thing is true when it comes to Christ.  Before He created the world, He had you in His mind, and being God he was not limited by space or time, and though He had not spoke the world into being, He saw you and He chose you.  The Psalmist David had this to say, “Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there were none of them.” (Psalm 139:16)  (Note: You and I should be guarded of anyone who tells us they totally understand this truth, to say so is to state you understand the majesty of God.  The bottom line is that only the Holy Spirit will give you the faith and insights to understand this truth, to a non-believer, this makes no sense. )

Psalm 139:16 as our setting, has help me understand Ephesians 1:5, “In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.”  The word predestined has caused some who are in Christ to become arrogant, prideful and very judgmental, with an attitude of “I was chosen, sorry about you.”  I would like to make the case that the “us” in verse four is everyone, His will was to redeem man, and often I go back to this; God became my Redeemer, before He became my Creator. 

In John 3:16, it states that God so loved the world, it does not say the predestined ones, and if only we would keep reading, “For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believed stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.” (John 3:17-18)  The Creator God, who saw your unformed substance and numbered your days before one of them happened, also saw down through time, in what we time critters call future, and knew if we would accept or reject Jesus.

From the Back Porch,

Bob Rice