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EPHESIANS - Be Filled With The Spirit
Meditations, Reflections, Prayer and Questions over the Epistel to the Ephesians
Part 1 - The Prayers of the Apostle at the Beginning of his Letter for the Churches in and around Ephesus (Ephesians 1:3-23)
A - A Prayer of the Apostle at the Beginning of his Letter for the Churches in and around Ephesus (Ephesians 1:3-15)

Our being chosen in Christ (Ephesians 1:4-6)


Ephesians 1:4-6
1:4 ''Just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love, having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will, to the praise of the glory of His grace, by which He has made us accepted in the Beloved” (Eph. 1:4-6)

The first blessing we receive from our heavenly Father, through His Son, is, in the words of Paul, our “choosing”. Here Jesus spoke a word of warning to His followers: “For many are called, but few are chosen” (Matt. 22:14). The question arises: Who then is worthy to be chosen to dwell forever in the nearness of God? Who is able to endure the glory of the Lord without being penetrated and judged by its radiant beams of light? (Acts 9:3, 4a, 8, 9; Rev. 1:17). “There is none who does good, no, not one” (Psalm 14:3b). “No one is good but One, that is, God” (Mark 10:18). Therefore, we first need to recognize that no one is worthy to be chosen by God.

Professor Karl Barth of Switzerland is to have described this text in Ephesians as the overturning of our understanding regarding predestination in the Bible, for no one is directly chosen by our Father in heaven, but only chosen following his faith and establishment in Christ Jesus! The heartless words of the Koran were already out-dated when they were written, concerning how “Allah leads astray those he will and rightly guides the ones he pleases” (Surahs al-Baqara 2:26; al An´am 6:39; al-Ra´d 13:27; Ibrahim 14:4; al-Nahl 16:93; al-Fatir 35:08; al-Muddathir74:31-34). Our God is no capricious and heartless despot, but a Father full of mercy and goodness. Paul worshiped and extolled Him in view of his eternal love, His patient compassion, and our being chosen through and in Christ.

The message of Ephesians 1:4 also means that Jesus, as the Son of God, alone possesses the honour and attributes to be chosen by His Father. He is the incarnation of His holy love. He lived blameless with His Father before all time and, as His Word, created together with His Father the universe (John 1:3; 1 Cor. 8:6b; Col. 1:16-18; Heb. 1:2). He reconciled all sinners with the Holy God and offered them an open door to the Father (John 14:6; Rom. 3:23-24 etc.). Whoever comes to Him and believes His words will be cleansed from his malice and grafted into the spiritual body of Jesus. All who have trusted Jesus cling to Him like grapes to the vine. Through this embodiment the believer receives his portion and right in the election of Jesus. Only in and with Jesus do we have the chance to come to and remain with the Father (Rev. 7:9-10).

A person is involved in the coming into being of his choosing, in that he took the risk to believe in Jesus. Through the proclamation of Jesus and the words of His messengers, the one searching is called by our Father in heaven, but never forced, to deny self and follow the Son of God. The one who hears this call of Jesus and renders obedience has the good pleasure of his Father realized in him. Even before the foundation of the world, He determined that all the people He intended to create would have the chance, despite their expected disobedience, to be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth (1 Tim. 2:4).

Who among of us lives holy and blameless before God, our Father?

Sadly, there are only a limited number of people who are chosen by the Father in heaven, for not all want to pay the high price for their choosing. They are summoned to die to their egoism and ambition and to practically exercise the love of the Father and His Son. They are led, by His justifying grace and through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit, to be holy, just as God is holy (Lev. 19:2). They are called to be merciful, just as their Father is merciful (Luke 6:36). Furthermore, they are summoned to be perfect, just as their Father in heaven is perfect (Matt. 5:48). No man can accomplish this by himself. For that he continually needs a Saviour and a Comforter. Therefore, our choosing is not realized directly in each individual, but only in communion with Christ. Only “in Him” do we have the chance to be regarded as pure and to be appraised as saints.

“Only in Him, oh such a miraculous gift, can we have redemption,the redemption through His blood!”

so wrote Philipp Friedrich Hiller. Even Dr. Martin Luther needed 18 years of Bible study to grasp that the just shall live “by his faith”! (Rom. 1:17) Paul praised God that the spiritual situation of Christ´s followers is not hopeless, but wonderfully and mercifully controlled and prepared through the love of the Holy Trinity.

Our being chosen through Christ does not primarily have to do with our present and future; rather, it has to do with the joy of the Father, who wants His chosen ones to live “before Him” in love and truth. Who is it that loves God so much that he strives to live holy for His sake? We are not, with all our clever thinking, the focal point of existence, but God Himself, who chose us in Christ Jesus. Our selfish carousel of “me, myself and I” must be shattered so that He and His Son alone are worshiped.

Predestined to be children of God

Jesus, the Son of the Virgin Mary, remains the only true Son of God in accordance with the promises of the Old Testament and the words of the angel messenger (Luke 1:35). His life, service and sacrificial death always went according to the good pleasure of His Father in heaven.

Since our choosing can only come about “in Christ”, it also gives us an entitlement in His Sonship. His followers are not to be merely slaves in obeisance, living in continual fear, as Muslims do in their relationship to Allah. Rather, they are children of their Father in heaven. For them this signifies radical transformation -going from being death-ridden creatures to become those living in communion with Christ, who Himself is eternal life and who gives His immortal life-power to those who trust Him.

God´s love is greater than our understanding. He predestined those who truly believe in Christ to become His own children. This decision, made before time began, represents a right and relevant principle and goal in His plan of salvation. The will of God proceeds in an orderly way. In the fullness of time, God sent His Son into our world so that many homeless and lost could become His spiritual children.

Jesus taught these hopeless ones to pray the Lord´s Prayer and to trust their Father in heaven. He revealed to them His law, with its more than one thousand commands and which constitute the spiritual order for the family of God. He died as an atoning sacrifice in the place of those elected to salvation and adopted them in the name of His Father, so that they could become His children forever. The pleasure of God and His election are, therefore, not merely emotional intentions or empty promises. Rather, they are legitimately founded declarations of the will. The filial relation of those predestined in and through Christ remains the legal and judicial basis of our stand against Satan, the father of lies.

Beyond the judicially founded adoption of His children, our heavenly Father sent them His Holy Spirit through Jesus. Thereby they become able to be spiritually changed and to receive a new character. It is not the situations that are to be changed; rather, the person believing on the Lord Jesus is to be renewed. Paul confessed: “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away; behold, all things have become new” (2 Cor. 5:17). The Son of Mary had previously made it clear to the Sanhedrin member, Nicodemus: “Most assuredly I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God…he cannot enter the kingdom of God” (John 3:3, 5).

The Apostle Paul testified that the realization of the Fatherhood of God, judicially and spiritually understood, is a glorious grace occurring in His children through Jesus Christ. It is this marvellous fact that brings pardon to abominable sinners.

It is sometimes shameful when born-again Christians enthusiastically speak of their new existence in Christ as if there never had been an unclean segment of their life. The reality is that concrete sinners only become children of God by way of their election in Christ. Whoever recognizes and confesses what so often happens in many young lives during early developmental years – the impurity, lies, theft, deceit and other evil - must come to worship the Father and the Son. Old hereditary factors from earlier generations are overcome in a sinner through the blood of Christ and the righteousness of His Holy Spirit.

In his worship Paul praised the Father in heaven for His undeserved and unending, great and glorious grace. It is this grace that brings pardon to every person who believes in and accepts Jesus Christ as his Beloved Savior.

Here arises a question: How much do we really love and thank the Father and the Son if we are under the leading of the Holy Spirit? When Jesus asked Peter three times: “do you love Me? the spokesmen for the disciples suddenly became saddened. He grasped that his Lord was not just asking him about his feelings and intentions. Rather, the question had to do with the carrying through of concrete responsibilities and duties – in which perhaps even the preparedness to die a martyr´s death would be required of him! In view of the fact that the antichrist will come to the earth in the last days to try and force us to worship him, what will we answer?

Prayer: Holy Father in heaven, we worship You, for You have called us and chosen us in Jesus Christ, Your beloved Son. Through Him You adopted us, the guilty and unworthy, and given us the new birth, so that we might live holy before You as your children. Who are we that You should show compassion to us? We thank You for Your great love. We ask You to also save our friends and relatives through Jesus, Your merciful and compassionate Son. Amen.

Questions:

  1. Wherein lies the mystery of our election?
  2. What does it mean to live holy and blamelessly before God?
  3. How did the Father in heaven predestine us to become His children?

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