Chosen – in Advance



Ephesians 1:3-6
3Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places,
4even as he chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love
5He predestined us for adoption as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of His will,
6to the praise of His glorious grace, with which He has blessed us in the Beloved.

As we study the New Testament and specifically the Epistles, we learn that Paul knew how to write a long sentence. We used to call them “run-on sentences” back in English class and they were considered a bad idea. Apparently in Greek, they aren’t a problem. Although we are going to break it up for our study here, Ephesians 1:3-14 is actually one long sentence in the Greek (!) which means it is actually one complete thought. With that in mind, we will bore down a little and see what can be gleaned from these words over the next couple of days.

The punch of the four verses for today is obviously blessing. God chose us for the purpose of blessing us because of His love. Imagine if you will, God the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit before the creation of the world. God has developed a plan that includes YOU from its inception. That plan came fully formed and informed, knowing that there was going to be a tremendous sacrifice needed to fulfill the plan. God knew that all of the beauty He created was going to be spoiled by sin before the first creative Word was spoken. So why did He do it? Because His love demanded it. His passion was to have a focus for the expression of His perfect love. Even though He knew we were going to mess things up completely, He moved forward with His plan because His plan included the cure for the mess. He knew that He would send His Son to suffer and die for our sin, thus returning us to His side – all become of His over powering love. We were chosen in advance to be loved.

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