Chosen - Ephesians 1:4

We're looking now at Ephesians 1. We've already examined the first three verses of this chapter that uh form the introduction. And here in verses 4 through 14, we have Paul describing to us some of the blessings that we have as Christians. Now, keep in mind that the key verse to the first half of Ephesians, chapters 1, 2, and 3, is the word "blessings." These first three chapters describe for us the blessings that we have in Christ. Chapters 4, 5, and 6 describe the behavior that we ought to have as Christians. In other words, the first half of the book deals with our wealth in Christ, how rich we are, and the last half of the book, our walk in Christ, righteousness in our daily life.

Now, verse 3 of Ephesians 1 tells us that God has already blessed every Christian with every blessing of the Spirit that he needs. We don't have to go begging. We have been made rich in the Lord Jesus Christ. You see, many people have the idea, and it's a wrong idea, that when you become a Christian, God forsakes you. He saves you, but from then on, you're you're on your own. You just go the best you can. This isn't true. When God saves us, He gives to us through the Holy Spirit and through His Son Jesus Christ everything that we need to live for His glory. You see, God has a great deal in in stake in our lives. He has a great deal at stake in our lives. The fact of the matter is, many of us sometimes disgrace the name of Jesus Christ by the way we live. And of course, this doesn't please the Lord. And so He has given to us all that we need to be the kind of Christians that we ought to be. If I'm not the kind of a Christian I ought to be, this isn't God's fault, it's my fault. Because I am not appropriating by faith that which He has already given me.

Now, He begins to tell us in these in this first chapter, in these verses, what God has given to us. We pointed out in our last lesson that you can divide verses 4 through 14 in three parts. We have the blessings from God the Father in verses 4, 5, and 6. In verse 4, He has chosen us. In verse 5, He has adopted us. And in verse 6, He has made us accepted. So here are three blessings from God the Father: He has chosen us, He has adopted us, He has accepted us. In verses 7 through 12, we have the blessings of God the Son. He has redeemed us and forgiven us, verse 7. He has revealed God's will to us, verses 8 through 10. And He has made us an inheritance unto the Lord, verses 11 and 12. Then in verses 13 and 14, we have the blessings from God the Holy Spirit. He has sealed us, verse 13, and He has given us an earnest. That is the down payment, looking forward to the future glory that we're going to have in Christ, verse 14.

Now, let's begin with verse 4 and examine in detail these blessings that we have from God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit. Before we do this, however, let me point out something rather interesting. At the end of each of these sections, the Apostle Paul tells us why these blessings were given. Look at your Bible, please. In verse 4, God the Father chose us. In verse 5, He adopted us. In verse 6, He accepted us. Why? Look at Ephesians 1:6, "To the praise of the glory of His grace." Now, in verse 7, the Son redeemed us, forgave us. He's revealed God's will to us. He's made us an inheritance. Why? Look at Ephesians 1:12, "that we should be to the praise of His glory." In verse 13, the Holy Spirit has sealed us. In verse 14, He has given us the earnest of our inheritance. Now, why did He do this? Ephesians 1:14, "unto the praise of His glory." Three times in this section, we're told that God has done this not because we're good, and not because we deserve it. He has done this to the praise of His glory. Mark it there in Ephesians 1:6, in Ephesians 1:12, and in Ephesians 1:14.

You know, this is one aspect of salvation that people forget. I used to do a lot of preaching in rescue missions. It's remarkable how the Gospel of Jesus Christ can get into the life of someone who is down and out and rejected and transform that person. It's so wonderful to meet people whose lives have been completely transformed by the power of God. Now, we don't see a lot of this today, perhaps, because many people have a semblance of morality. But oh, how remarkable it is when we see the Gospel of Jesus Christ changing sinners.

Now, why does God do this? For the good of this man? Well, yes, it is for the good of the man. But primarily, God does this for the praise of His glory. You see, we don't deserve to be saved. There's not a person on the face of this earth who deserves to be saved. The fact that anybody is ever saved is to the praise of God's glory, to the praise of God's grace. And that leads us to verse 4, where we're told that the first blessing we have from God the Father is that He has chosen us. "According as he, God the Father, hath chosen us in him, in Christ, before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love."

Now, this is the doctrine of election. And there are many people who argue about this, who resist it, who debate it, who will not accept it. Now, wherever you go in your Bible, you're going to find the Gospel is involved with election. Now, what is election? Some people have the idea that election means God looks down through the ages and sees who's going to be saved, who's going to believe, and so He saves them. Well, that means that election depends on my decision. I want to make this very clear because I know my own heart. If salvation had depended upon me, I would never have been saved. I enjoy reading Charles Spurgeon. Charles Spurgeon was perhaps the greatest Baptist preacher who ever lived, a tremendous man of God. And he made the statement in one of his sermons that I recall reading. He says, "I must believe in the doctrine of election because I know my own heart. There is none that understandeth," says Romans 3, "there is none that seeketh after God."

Now, we were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. Look in your Bible, if you have a Bible in front of you, to 1 Corinthians 1. Now, the Apostle Paul was not seeking Jesus Christ when Christ found him there in Acts 9. In 1 Corinthians 1:26, Paul says this: "For ye see your calling, brethren, how that not many wise men after the flesh, not many mighty, not many noble, are called. But God hath chosen the foolish things of the world to confound the wise. And God hath chosen the weak things of the world to confound the things which are mighty. And the base things of the world and things which are despised hath God chosen, yea, and things which are not to bring to naught things that are, that no flesh should glory in his presence." You see, election is to the glory of God.

When I sit down and consider my own salvation, I could have been born in the middle of some country where the Word of God was never preached. I could have been raised in some family, in some nation somewhere where the Bible was never seen. I could have lived and died having never heard the name of Jesus Christ. But God in His sovereign grace, not because I deserved it, but because He loved me, called me and chose me from before the foundation of the world. Now, dear old Dr. Ironside used to picture it this way. The Word of God teaches very clearly that God calls people to be saved. "Whosoever will, let him come." Throughout the Word of God, we have two highways that run parallel to each other. One is God's sovereign election. The other is man's moral responsibility. And Dr. Ironside used to say this: "You're going down the street, a lost sinner. And you see a big sign over a door that says, 'Come unto me, and I will give you rest.' And so you open the door and you walk in and you meet Jesus Christ and He saves you and gives you rest. Then you turn around and see a sign over the inside of the door that says, 'Chosen in Christ from before the foundation of the world.'"

Now, I don't go down to the rescue mission and preach the doctrine of election. Election doesn't save people. Election is a spiritual truth for God's family, for God's children. Once we have been saved, we rejoice at the fact that we didn't save ourselves. He chose us by grace. He chose us in His love from before the foundation of the world.

Now, we're going to discover later on in verse 5 that there's a difference between election and predestination. My, how confused people are about predestination. They read some of the wildest ideas into predestination, and the Bible never put them there. Now, someone is at this point probably saying, "Well, preacher, if God practices election as you preach it, then why bother to preach to people?" The answer is very simple. The same God who ordained that I should be saved also ordained the means whereby I was saved. He ordained that there should be an evangelist preaching at a youth rally on May the 12th, 1945. He ordained that someone should invite me to go to that meeting, and there I heard the Gospel, and there I was saved. You see, God's election can never ever be separated from God's call. There's an interesting illustration of this back in Mark 10. If you have your Bible before you, you might want to turn back there. Mark 10. The Lord Jesus is on His way to Jerusalem. On the wayside of the road, there sits a blind beggar named Bartimaeus. Now, he couldn't see, just like sinners today, "except a man be born again, he cannot see." Bartimaeus could not see, but he could hear. And the crowd was going by. The pilgrims who were on their way to Jerusalem, the disciples of the Lord Jesus Christ. And Bartimaeus could tell there was something different about this crowd. Now, that leads me to say, the crowd that's following Jesus Christ had better be different. People ought to be able to tell a difference in our lives. And so he said, "What's going on?" And they said, "Jesus of Nazareth is passing by." Now, the name Jesus means Savior. And I'm sure Bartimaeus had heard that Jesus had healed many blind people. And in Mark 10:47, it tells us, "And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and to say, 'Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me.'" And verse 48 says that the people said, "Be quiet! Don't make so much noise." But he began to cry out even louder, "Thou Son of David, have mercy on me!" Now, verse 49 is the interesting verse. "And Jesus stood still and commanded him to be called." Now, that's election. He said, "I want that man." And they called the blind man, saying to him, "Be of good comfort, rise; he calleth thee." You see, the Lord Jesus Christ used human instruments to bring this blind man to salvation. The rest of the story tells us, he came to Jesus. And this is the way it works out.

When you go to preach to unsaved people, you don't talk to them about election. Election is a family secret that belongs to God's people. You preach the Gospel. The Word of God says, "God is not willing that any should perish." That's negative. "God who will have all men to be saved." That's positive. "Whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have everlasting life." That's inclusive, everybody. The Jesus Christ died on the cross for the whole world. The Gospel is being sent out into the whole world. God's invitation is, "Whosoever will, let him come." I have no right to stand in anybody's way. But you know, after you've come to Jesus Christ, you look back and you discover how He led and how He directed, and you discover, lo and behold, you were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. Because our salvation doesn't depend on anything we've ever done.

You see, God's plan of salvation was not an afterthought. When Adam and Eve sinned, God didn't sit down and wring His hands and say, "Oh, what am I going to do now?" He had everything planned. Jesus Christ was the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world. He had everything planned. Salvation is not some postscript that God has written. He knew what He was going to do. Now, before ever I did anything good or bad, God had chosen me. You say, "How do I know if I'm one of God's chosen people? How do I know if I'm one of God's elect?" If you've trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, if you have responded to His call to come and be saved, and you've trusted Him, you're one of His elect. This means you can't ever lose your salvation. Because if God chose you before you did anything bad, or anything good, what can you do now that will ever change that? Your salvation is rooted in eternity, in the eternal plan of God. It's not something that's wrapped up in this world or in your good deeds or your bad deeds.

"According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world." Now, before we leave this particular verse, let me make something clear. All three persons of the Godhead are involved in your salvation: God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit. The Apostle Peter makes this very clear in 1 Peter 1:2. Talking about the Christian, he says, "elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, through sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ." My salvation involved the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Let me put it this way: As far as God the Father is concerned, I was saved when He chose me in Christ before the foundation of the world. But that didn't save me. As far as God the Son is concerned, I was saved when He died for me on the cross. But that didn't save me. As far as God the Holy Spirit is concerned, I was saved on May the 12th, 1945, about 8:45 in the evening, when the Holy Spirit of God spoke to my heart, convicted me of my sin, and I received Jesus Christ as my Savior. When I yielded to the promptings of the Holy Spirit, then that which God the Father had done, and that which God the Son had done became real in my life.

Jesus puts these two truths together in John 6:37 when He says, "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me." That's election. But He goes on to say, "and him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." That's man's choice. Someone has well said, "Try to explain election and you'll lose your mind. Try to explain it away and you'll lose your soul."

Now, the reason people rebel against election is because they don't want to believe in the sovereignty of God. God is sovereign. God doesn't need your help or my help. God is all-powerful. God is all-knowing. People don't want to believe in God's grace. God's grace means God does for us what we don't deserve. Do I deserve to be saved? Of course not. God could have bypassed me and saved somebody else, and I couldn't say one word about it. The whole world is condemned. Everyone deserves to be lost. No one deserves to be saved. God could save one person, and no one could argue about it. That's grace. That's grace. God in His grace wants to save you today. And after you're saved, you'll look back and find out that you were chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world.

Now, notice that this choosing had a purpose behind it. Ephesians 1:4, "According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love." Why did God choose me? Because I was holy? No. Because I was blameless? No. Because I did love Him? No. He chose me that He might change me and make me holy. Another word holy simply means set apart, a saint. Without blame. This means that my motive and my attitude is right. I'm blameless. I don't go around doing things that are wrong. Before him in love. That my life might be a life of holiness and love to the glory of God.

This then is the doctrine of election. The first spiritual blessing I have is that I have been chosen in Christ before the foundation of the world. Now, before we move into the next lesson, which will take up verse 5 on predestination and adoption, two words that are so greatly abused, my, how many people read the wrong idea into both predestination and adoption there in verse 5. But before we move on, let me ask you this: Are you trusting in the grace of God? Now, I know people don't like election. The world today wants to believe that man is good and man can save himself. Romans 3 makes it very clear, man cannot save himself, and man does not want to save himself. Basically, human nature is opposed to God. It's at enmity with God. There's a warfare going on. And the only way anybody ever can be saved is by grace. And today I'm proclaiming to you the grace of God. I'm saying to you on the authority of the Word of God that Jesus Christ died for your sins on the cross. That the only thing keeping you from coming to the Lord Jesus Christ today, He died for all, says 1 Timothy 2:6. The only thing keeping you from coming today is your refusal to acknowledge the grace of God. Will you admit today that you are lost, that you are a sinner, that you don't deserve to be saved? Will you rejoice today in the grace of God in that He has sent this message out to call you? We're calling you today in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, just as they called blind Bartimaeus centuries ago. We're calling you to come to Jesus Christ. And after you've come, you'll discover He has chosen you in Christ, and you never, never will be lost again.

Our Father, we thank Thee for the precious truth that Thou art calling people today. That the Holy Spirit of God is calling out people to be saved. May someone respond to the message today and come to Christ, for we pray in His name. Amen.