Bill Fitzhenry's Thoughts For Today…

Understanding important truths from the Bible….

Is God Fair? 

Ephesians 1:3-4  NASB

³ 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,

⁴ just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and blameless before Him.  

Paul begins his message in this epistle with the privilege of believers.  God has “blessed” or given “every spiritual blessing” to all included in this statement.  There are two qualifications.  First these pertain to the “heavenlies” and secondly they are limited to, “in Christ.” 

“The heavenlies” qualify both the origin and the nature of the blessing.  God is the origin, and the nature is that of heaven.  Those in heaven have these same blessings in kind. 

“In Christ” directs the reader to the sphere of participation.  One becomes a participant by being “in Christ” by the new birth and faith.  Christ as the purchaser and dispenser of salvation has become the sphere of being for all spiritual blessing. 

Then there is Vs. 4.  By what means did these spiritual blessings become personal?  There is a conduit between that which the believer has in heavenly places and the present participation.  The writer begins Vs. 4 with “just as”, kathos or as the KJV has it “even as”.  The adverb defines the connection of this verse with Vs. 3.  Rather than the cause of the blessing what is to follow is the mode by which this transpires.  This mode of happening is by the divine prerogative.  “He chose us” is the singular activity of the Divine Being in bringing this about. 

The “choice” has two characteristics.

1.  The verb is Greek aorist.  This confronts the reader with the fact that the action is completed in itself and final.  It has been done and nothing can be added to it.  The past of the activity is defined as before there was a creation.  Because of this nothing in creation can influence or affect it.
2. The “choice” has a particular purpose.  “That we should be holy and without blame”.  It must be noted that nothing in any Christian’s life that can be considered as holy or blameless can be considered as a contributor to this choice.

It is absolutely foreign to Paul’s intent to make anything about the Christian contribute to God’s choice.  And it is a fact of the Christian’s holiness.  To be “holy and blameless” before God is

to be in Christ by faith and living in the light and strength of that faith. 

Understanding these verses as they are written leaves but two choices.  They are a) an absolute, without exception, universalism or b) a sovereign unconditional choice of some.  There is no middle ground.  And when the dust of controversy settles; when depravity is understood as the Bible presents it; this grace.

This is “to the praise of the glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us in the Beloved”.  Ephesians 1:6 

To God alone be the glory.