Pondering Predestination

"Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love he predestined us for adoption as sons 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."  - Ephesians 1:3-6, ESV

My wonderful wife is leading a small group of Cheraw women through a Good Morning Girls Bible study in Ephesians.  They read 2-4 verses per day, write them out and reflect carefully and prayerfully upon them.  The section of verses quoted above is taken from yesterday and today's readings.

If you skimmed through the verses above quickly, go back and read them carefully.  Write them out on a sheet of paper, if you'd like.  That is a great exercise for forced close reading.  These verses are pretty clear and say some very bold things, things which are controversial in our culture and in the contemporary church, but which Paul celebrates joyfully.  Here is not debating or defending these truths; he is rejoicing in them!

Let's take a closer look at the structure of the joyful praise Paul offers here.  It offers us a perfect lesson of how careful attention to grammar and sentence structure make all the difference in Bible study -

Paul proclaims how greatly blessed God is who has so greatly and richly blessed us.  How greatly has God blessed us? He has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.  Then, Paul says God has blessed us even as (or just as) He chose us in Christ before the foundation of the world.  In linking these two things (present blessing and past choosing), Paul is saying that we are now being blessed in the same way and with the same degree of certainty as we were chosen before the foundation of the world (the linking word translated "even" in the ESV means "according as, just as, even as, in proportion as, in the degree that, since, seeing that, agreeably to the fact that").

What were we chosen for? We were chosen "that we should be holy and blameless before him."  As Matthew Henry puts it, "not because he foresaw they would be holy, but because he determined to make them so."  We were chosen in order that we should be holy.

Paul then continues praising God and explaining the foundation of all of our spiritual blessings when he says, "In love he predestined us for adoption through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will."  The heart of this sentence is "he predestined us" and then we have several modifiers which answer several questions for us -

1. Predestined for what? for adoption as sons of God
2. How can we be adopted as sons of God? through Jesus Christ, who alone is the rightful and begotten Son of God
3. What motivates God to predestine us for adoption through Jesus Christ? His love, for we are predestined "in love."
4. How is our predestination accomplished? "according to the purpose of His will" 

And Paul says that ALL of this- our being chosen and predestined- has one final goal: "the praise of his glorious grace" (undeserved favor and kindness).  That's where we started in verse 3 and where Paul brings us again in verse 6.  These precious truths ring out for Paul as motivation for praise.  For Paul, this is not a matter for speculation or disputation, but for exaltation and celebration.

If you are in Christ, you are dearly loved by God.  His love motivated Him to chose you and appoint you to a destiny, a glorious goal that He sees through to completion, as He has determined.  Do as Paul did and praise God! Rejoice in His love! Let it draw your heart and your life to bless the Lord!