WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE CHOSEN AND PREDESTINED?
by Tim Thomas
April 25, 2005
Ephesian 1:4-6,11-12
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Amplified Bible
4Even as [in His love] He chose us [actually picked us out for Himself as His own] in Christ before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy (consecrated and set apart for Him) and blameless in His sight, even above reproach, before Him in love.
5For He foreordained us (destined us, planned in love for us) to be adopted (revealed) as His own children through Jesus Christ, in accordance with the purpose of His will [abecause it pleased Him and was His kind intent]—
6[So that we might be] to the praise and the commendation of His glorious grace (favor and mercy), which He so freely bestowed on us in the Beloved...
11In Him we also were made [God's] heritage (portion) and we obtained an inheritance; for we had been foreordained (chosen and appointed beforehand) in accordance with His purpose, Who works out everything in agreement with the counsel and design of His [own] will,
12So that we who first hoped in Christ [who first put our confidence in Him have been destined and appointed to] live for the praise of His glory!
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aMarvin Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament.
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The verses that we want to focus on speak of being chosen by God. I must confess that I wrestled with understanding these verses. At first glance, they seem to give the impression that those of us who have come to put our faith in Jesus did so because we could do nothing else, since God "chose" us and "predestined" us to do so. Who can fight the will of God? If He decided we would follow Him, what else could we do? This seems inherently unfair for those who were not chosen, because there are eternal consequences for not being reconciled to God.
I had two main objections to understanding these verses as negating our free will to choose to put our faith in Jesus. First, 1 Timothy 2:4 tells us that God wants everyone to find salvation in Jesus. Yet if we are all predestined to one path or the other by Him, then in what sense is it rational for Him to want it to be other than He already predestined it to be?! My second objection is that if we were created in God's image, that means that we were created with a freedom to choose to love or not to love. Anything less than that makes us less like God and more like rocks or trees.
I have searched many commentaries on these verses, and I can tell you that there is much disagreement about their meaning. So after I share what I have come to understand these verses to mean, please feel free to believe differently. I want you to understand, however, that I have done my best to be faithful to God in coming to a correct interpretation of what God is trying to communicate.
As I sought God for help in understanding what He meant by these verses (I am assuming that the Apostle Paul wrote these words under divine inspiration, so that they are indeed God's truth for us), a phrase from elsewhere in the Bible came to mind: "many are called, but few are chosen." I searched and discovered that this is Jesus's conclusion to the parable of the wedding feast, found in Matthew 22:1-14. In this parable, a king is preparing a wedding feast for his son. The important people that he invited to the wedding refused to come, even after multiple invitations. So the king sent his servants out to the streets and invited anyone they could find. Many people accepted the invitation. One man came to the banquet, but refused the wedding clothes provided for Him (the Bible doesn't say they were provided for Him, but providing special wedding clothes to the guests was indeed the custom of the day). He was promptly expelled from the banquet, into what might easily be seen as Hell. Then Jesus immediately says, "For many are called, but few are chosen."
This seems to say that to be "chosen" (which incidentally is the same word in Greek as the one used in Ephesians 1:4), all you have to do is to accept the invitation (i.e., to follow God) and put on the new clothes (i.e., put on Jesus). Seems pretty simple. So why does Ephesians 1:4 say that we were "chosen in Him before the foundation of the world"? It's because we were chosen in Jesus (in the Matthew 22:14 sense of being chosen), and that Jesus was God's plan -- His way -- for reconciling man to God, and that this plan of Jesus being the way was established before the foundation of the world.
The word "predestined" is incomplete by itself. It begs the question, "Predestined to or for what?" Here we see that those who would become believers were predestined to being adopted by God (v. 5) and to either receive an inheritance, as some translations say, or probably more accurately, to be God's inheritance (v. 11). Since the word translated "predestined" means literally "to define beforehand", we might understand these verses to say that for those of us who received God's invitation of salvation through faith in Jesus Christ and who are living this life by faith in Him, God determined beforehand to adopt us as His very own children and that we would be His precious inheritance.
While I am delighted to have come away from this study with an understanding of being "chosen" and "predestined" that is consistent with my understanding of other parts of the Bible dealing with the nature of people and the desires of God, all that focus has taken away from really appreciating the richness of this passage in describing God's plan for us. We see here that God's plan is that we should be holy, which the Amplified Bible tells us means that we are consecrated and set apart for His purposes. This sounds to me like we are commissioned as God's special agents, ready at a moment's notice to respond to any assignment that He may give us. Sometimes we don't feel this way, but this is indeed God's intent for us, and the way that He sees us.
God also has made us blameless in His sight. This means that even though we struggle with temptation and sometimes fail in our struggles, God has declared us "not guilty" and without fault, because Jesus was without fault, and when we put on Jesus (by believing in Him), we put on His righteousness over top of our unrighteousness.
I mentioned this before, but it may not have sunk in: verse 5 says that we are God's adopted children! Sometimes people incorrectly claim that all people are God's children. But the fact is, until people are reconciled to our Father through Jesus, they are children of darkness. It is only through this process of reconciliation by faith that we are adopted as God's own children. And as a child of God, you are indeed special! He knows you -- even every hair on your head is numbered -- but you are not just a number to Him. He knows you very well, and indeed made you just as you are, and it was not a mistake. Indeed, you are special as you are! See Psalm 139 for some very inspiring reading about the vastness of the knowledge of God in relationship to us.
Because of all of these undeserved benefits that have been given to us, the Apostle Paul spontaneously praises God, for His wonderful and amazing grace (unmerited favor and mercy) that is the reason for our blessings, given because of and through Jesus. In fact, as an awareness of are most-favored status with God soaks in, it is difficult not to praise God for these blessings that were lavished on us. Thank you, Lord, for your wonderful grace that brings us new life and favor, and that we are now brought into your very household as your beloved children!
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