These Questions.
“Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the
world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him in love.” –Ephesians 1:4
LEB
This verse. There was a
time I asked what it meant that God chose me before the foundation of the
world? Or how I’m to be holy and blameless before Him in love? Some
translations stop verse four at ‘Him’, and attribute ‘in love’ to
verse five, which kind of confused me for a bit. I appreciate the literal word-for-word
translation of the Lexham English Bible, which can also be seen in the
Christian Standard Bible. The CSB translates it as: “…to be holy and blameless
in love before Him.”
The first thing God stripped
from me while meditating on this verse is that I cannot ascribe what I think to
God, as if I understand His ways. The notion that my tiny peon brain is even
capable of considering God’s majesty or motivations outside of what He has
revealed through His Word is hubris (Isaiah 55:8-9). And even if I don’t
exactly understand what He has revealed in His Word, who am I to talk back to
my Creator or tell Him who He should be? I love the CSB’s translation of Romans
9:20a, “But who are you, a mere man, to talk back to God?”
We like to project our
notion of who God should be onto Him from our fallen state of being. With this
verse especially, we might debate election versus congruent election, freewill
versus predestination. Yep. Scholars use this verse to argue election and predestination;
and while some may argue that these are just opinions on a confusing and
unnecessary topic, we always have to bow down to what God’s Word tells us.
We may struggle with why
God loved Jacob and hated Esau, we may even be able to argue that it was Jacob
and Esau’s descendants that the Word is talking about in those verses rather
than the two brothers! No matter, it still shows that God choses one man or his
descendants over another (Malachi 1:2-3; Romans 9:13). Whatever one’s take is
when examining Scripture like this, the final realization always leads to this
question: if He chose us before the foundation of the world, does He choose one
to be saved while choosing another to not be saved? This will lead us to
wrestle with a lot of things.
We may wrestle with why Jesus said that many are
called but few are chosen (Matthew 22:14). Does that mean that some of us have
been chosen from before the foundation of the world and cannot be snatched out
of His hand (John 10:28), while others might kick the tires of Christianity and
then fall away proving they were never saved to begin with? (Hebrews 6:4-6). Does
this mean that some are internally called or chosen by the Holy Spirit, while
others are externally called and will come only by way of hearing the Gospel?
There are many questions
we’ll wrestle with and some might argue against our even needing to worry about
this. But I wonder if that isn’t encouraging and helping promote spiritual
laziness? Should we not know what the Word of God tells us? Should
we not study to show ourselves approved (2 Timothy 2:15), are we not
told to be prepared to give an account to anyone who asks why we believe and
hope in Jesus? (1 Peter 3:15).
Would we be inclined to
take someone serious if we asked them why they believed in a certain heart
surgeon before considering using them and all they could say was, well,
because my nurse said she was good? Right there, would we ask no more
questions, do no more research on the doctor, and just not bother to examine
the doctors body of work for itself? Would we just go off of what someone else
has told us without checking the facts? Cut me open, Doc, I trust you can do
it. Half of us can’t even get through a conversation without checking Google
to see if what we are being told is accurate.
Yet, some of us expect others to
become holy and blameless in love, before our Lord, based on nothing but an
appeal using charisma and emotionalism! That sounds like stories I have heard
about youth camp. Kids getting swept up in the emotions of camp and are all about Jesus as they return home. But how many kids does that approach sustain if their youth
pastor is NOT encouraging them to study God’s Word for themselves? Did martyrs
like William Tyndale die in vain? Strong of conviction, Tyndale translated the
Bible into English so that people like us could read it and study it. Doing so
was not well received and being true to the Word of God even when it ran contrary
to the King of England’s desires led him to being strangled and burned at the
stake. How blessed are we that we have Bibles to read at our leisure?! How foolish
are we if we simply do not?
This is your salvation, faith,
and eternal life we are talking about here. If you are a believer, do you feel
compelled to know what it means to be holy and blameless before God? Are you
placing the burden of understanding what God reveals about Himself solely on
your pastor on Sunday or are you taking up your cross and studying it on your
own time, too? You can’t blame the pastor for not understanding if you aren’t
studying it for yourself. Worse yet, are you a pastor that discourages study
because what the Word says may not align with what your heart says? You cannot
blame the congregation for not understanding God’s will if you discourage them
from studying the Bible on their own. So, do you encourage or accept spiritual
laziness because it is easier, or do you challenge others to know what God says from His Word? I thank God that our lead pastor encourages us to
study the Word of God and know it, while teaching it as much as preaching it. I
am also grateful that our youth pastor encourages our kids to be in the Word
and study it, too! What is even better is that not only do they do that, but you can
see the fruit of God’s work in their own lives by how they treat others and
pastor their flock.
The truth is we can only become holy
and blameless before God by accepting Jesus Christ as our Lord and Savior.
Jesus paid for our sins by living life without being guilty of a single sin. He
was 100% God; He was 100% Man. He chose to save us by laying down His life down
so that we could be restored to God. He lived, died, and resurrected so that we
could live eternally with God in harmony. This is understood clearly, “For God
so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him
should not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send His son to condemn
the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him.” (John
3:16-17 ESV). Further, Hebrews 10:8-10 shows us that we are sanctified and made
holy through His sacrifice.
So, whether some of us are called
before the foundation of the world by God in Christ and we receive that call
internally from the Holy Spirit, or some of us are externally called by hearing
the Gospel and come to accept Jesus, at the core we ALL have a Gospel response to
contend with and the crux of that response is based on whether we believe that
the Word of God made flesh is Jesus Christ and whether the Word of God given to
us in the Holy Bible is God’s revelation to us about Himself.
Therefore, are you in
the Word? Is the Word in you? In the end, that is the only way we can answer
these questions.
Until Next Time
God Bless
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