The Kind Intention of Predestination

Tonight we are going to be focusing on Ephesians 1:4-6 but we are going to work backwards a little and start in verse 3. Last time we got together we talked about a key phrase that Paul uses in the middle of verse 3 that God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places and tonight we will talk about where that begins. As we are going to see in the next few verses, this great spiritual blessing that is given to us doesn’t come the moment of our justification, it has been in the process since before the foundation of the world. This is something that has been in the process from before time began. There was an old story of George Whitefield preaching on Zacchaeus and he said that even though he was small in stature and hard for the world to see, Christ couldn’t miss him because His eyes have been on him for all eternity. What we’re going to really talk about tonight is predestination and I don’t want to rehash everything that I mentioned when I preached about it when we are going through Malachi but love or hate the doctrine, it’s there. It’s not just mentioned one time in Scripture and then never spoken of again. Page after page, we see the doctrine of predestination taking place. Now I fought against predestination for years. When I got my first pastor job in the fall/winter of 2015, I wasn’t a Calvinist or reformed or predestinarian but when I got to that job in the summer of 2016, my theology had completely changed. So that probably added to some of the issues but all of that is to say that I have grown up and heard both sides of arguments and after studying, I just can’t see a convincing argument to against predestination. So, let’s open up in prayer and then let’s read Ephesians 1:3-6.

Ephesians 1:3–6 NASB95

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ, just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined us to adoption as sons through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the kind intention of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved.

Why has God blessed us?

So let’s start with verse 3 a little bit, why has God blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ? The reason that He has blessed us is because He first chose us in Him. There is blessing just in the fact that He has chosen us. Two big questions that we need to be able to answer is: Why did God choose us and when did God choose us? Let’s start with the second one. When did God choose us. Paul says in the middle of verse 4 that it was before the foundation of the world. God does not look down the corridor of time to see who will respond favorably to Him and then base His predestination and election upon that. God has never learned any new information because He knows everything and everyone perfectly. But we’ll get more to that in a little bit. In 1 Peter 1:18-21 Peter writes about the plan of redemption and he says,

1 Peter 1:18–21 NASB95

knowing that you were not redeemed with perishable things like silver or gold from your futile way of life inherited from your forefathers, but with precious blood, as of a lamb unblemished and spotless, the blood of Christ. For He was foreknown before the foundation of the world, but has appeared in these last times for the sake of you who through Him are believers in God, who raised Him from the dead and gave Him glory, so that your faith and hope are in God.

Right there in verse 20 we see that the plan of salvation was known before the foundation of the world. The death of Christ for the salvation of fallen men wasn’t an after thought. If the death of Christ is foreknown before the foundation of the world, then the plan of redemption is foreknown before the foundation of the world. In Revelation 13:8 we read, “All who dwell on the earth will worship him, everyone whose name has not been written from the foundation of the world in the book of life of the Lamb who has been slain.” God is not adding names into the book. John will repeat this in Revelation 17:8. When we walked through Malachi 1, I mentioned how both Malachi 1 and Romans 9 point to God’s special, electing love and I mentioned that in Jacob and Esau we see a picture of God’s election. Paul writes in Romans 9:11 “for though the twins were not yet born and had not done anything good or bad, so that God’s purpose according to His choice would stand, not because of works but because of Him who calls,” Paul very plainly states that God’s election of Jacob over Esau lines up perfectly with God’s plan of redemption. God has the sovereign right to choose or pass over whomever He wishes. God is under no obligation to save anyone and yet in His perfect wisdom and will, He chooses a multitude that no one can number to be the special recipients of divine grace and mercy. One of my favorite Spurgeon quotes is that Spurgeon believed that God must have chosen him before he was born because He certainly would not have chosen him afterwards. God chooses the elect before they are born and beyond that, before the foundation of the world so that is the when. How about the why. Why does God choose whom He will choose? God did not chose us because He saw something in us that would be holy or because we were already holy. God chose us so that we would be holy and blameless. Like I said earlier, God does not look through the corridors of time and see and learn something about us and say, “I think I can make that one work. That one has potential.” Why does God choose us? Because He loves us. Nothing to do with the worthiness or qualifications of the person. He chose us so that we would be holy and blameless before Him. What election does is emphasize that the people of God are set apart for God. Noah was set apart, Abraham was set apart, Israel was set apart, David was set apart, all throughout history, all throughout Scripture, we see that God sets people and nations apart to be in a special relationship with Him. God’s election of His people serves as a reminder that God is God and we are not. If we take a journey through Romans 1-3, we see that there is no power or desire within any human being, in their sinful state, that wants to go to God. God’s election reminds us that unless God saves, their is no salvation. John Calvin said, “God’s election is free and beats down and annihilates all the unworthiness, works and virtues of men.” Throughout Ephesians we are going to see that salvation is not based on what we can do but entirely on what God has done.

What Election is and isn’t

When it comes to God’s election of Christians, we need to remember that our salvation and our election is not an excuse for sinful living. This is emphasized in Paul’s words that we are to be holy and blameless. That word blameless can also be translated as unblemished. When we think back to the Old Testament sacrifices, the requirement for them to be an appropriate sacrifice was that they were to be unblemished and undefiled. Really, they were to be perfect. We aren’t chosen so that we would keep on doing whatever it is that we were doing before we were saved. Paul says in Romans 6:1–2 “What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin so that grace may increase? May it never be! How shall we who died to sin still live in it?” The reason that we are chosen is so that we would be holy. Our holiness or our pursuit of holiness is the evidence of our election. What election also isn’t is an excuse for boasting. One of the biggest complaints that I heard early on about Calvinism and election was that Calvinists were the most arrogant and uptight Christians that people could come across and the Calvinist that is like that doesn’t understand Calvinism for what it really is. Election takes away any right to boast. Calvinists should be the most humble people on the planet because they recognize that unless God had first saved them, they wouldn’t be saved. A proper view of election comes from Deuteronomy 7:7–8. The Lord says to the nation of Israel, “The Lord did not set His love on you nor choose you because you were more in number than any of the peoples, for you were the fewest of all peoples, but because the Lord loved you and kept the oath which He swore to your forefathers, the Lord brought you out by a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery, from the hand of Pharaoh king of Egypt.” Why did God choose Israel, why did God choose anyone? Solely on the basis of His love for them. As someone that believes in the doctrine of predestination, I certainly don’t feel like I am better than anyone else. I don’t feel more worthy than anyone else. I feel grateful, I feel humbled because I feel like I know my own heart pretty well and I know that as sinful as I am on the inside and the outside, I have absolutely nothing within me that would be worth of God’s love. Another concern that people have about election is that if God chose us before the foundation of the world, what’s the point of missions and evangelism? Won’t God just save them anyway? First off, in Matthew 28, we see the great commission. This isn’t the great suggestion, it’s a command. Jesus tells His followers to go and make disciples. If God tells us to do something, we don’t need additional reasons to do it. Secondly, God’s sovereignty in salvation does not make evangelism less of a necessity. Paul says in Romans 10:14 “How then will they call on Him in whom they have not believed? How will they believe in Him whom they have not heard? And how will they hear without a preacher?” In God’s grand scheme for redemption, He uses us so that others would hear the message of the Gospel and be saved. J.I. Packer has a great book called Evangelism and the Sovereignty of God and in the book he says, “We must realize, therefore, that when God sends us to evangelize, He sends us to act as vital links in the chain of His purpose for the salvation of His elect. The fact that He has such a purpose, and that it is a sovereign purpose that cannot be thwarted, does not imply that, after all, our evangelizing is not needed for its fulfillment.” When we think about what God does in election, we also see that it is the only hope that we have for evangelism. God’s sovereign election reminds me that I am not responsible for the salvation of anyone. I’m not the one that brings life from death, only God can do that. When we do evangelism, we are trusting that God is going to accomplish the impossible. God’s election is the assurance for all believers that God has saved them in eternity past, is saving them now in eternity present, and will save them finally and totally in eternity future. Our election and our adoption as sons through Christ is God’s downpayment that He will have us for all eternity. Why does God do any of it? He does it for praise. He does it for His glory. R.C. Sproul said, “Ask yourself whether you like predestination. If you don’t, let me ask you: How do you feel about praising God? How do you feel about the grace of God? God’s Word does not see predestination as casting a shadow over God’s greatness but rather sees it as dispelling the shadows from God’s greatness, because the accent here on God’s plan of redemption and on His sovereign predestination is the praise of his glorious grace.” So people have asked me before about what I’ll do if my belief in God’s predestination is wrong, will that change anything for me. What I’ve said is that if for some reason my interpretation of the doctrine of predestination is wrong, all that I have done is given God more glory and credit in my salvation and what is wrong with that? God does not elect us in a spirit of hate, He chooses according to the kind intention of His will. Paul will use that phrase again in a few verses but within the doctrine of predestination is a clear picture of God who is full of love and full of grace. So, what questions do you guys have, what else can we talk about?