THREE QUESTIONS – AND TEN OBJECTIONS

Ephesians 1:3-14

Stuart Olyott

Those who have listened to Paul's teaching on spiritual blessings usually have a number of questions in their minds. There are three which are particularly common, and Ephesians 1:3-14 gives an answer to each one. We shall look at these first.

Paul's answers do not always meet with the approval of those who hear them. They raise objections, and we shall consider the ten which are most frequently voiced. Not everyone will agree that this should be done in a commentary such as this. But if we have reservations about what Paul says in his first chapter, how shall we derive any real profit from the rest?

It is on the simple condition of being 'in Christ'. This is a point Paul stresses throughout our paragraph. '[God] has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ... he chose us in him... having predestined us to adoption as sons by Jesus Christ to himself… he has made us accepted in the Beloved. In him we have redemption ... that he might gather together in one all things in Christ ... in him ... in whom also we have obtained an inheritance' (1:3,4,5,6,7,10,11, italics mine). It is too obvious to miss. Like the small boy who saw Dr Kevan's bricks, we should cry out, 'Please sir, it's all in Christ!'

This is made clear in verses 12 and 13. God has done what he has done, says Paul, 'that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of his glory'. There Paul probably has his own experience in mind. But the Ephesians had come to faith in Christ in just the same way. So he continues, 'In him you also trusted, after you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation; in whom also, having believed, you were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise.'

Heaven's riches become ours when we trust in Christ. We hear the truth about him. We believe it to be tree. And then we commit ourselves to what we have come to know and believe. We depend upon it. We put our whole weight upon it – not just on a series of truths, but on the person proclaimed in those truths.

This is precisely what had happened to the Ephesians. They had heard the word of truth, the gospel which announced salvation. They knew how holy God was, and how awful it was to be unlike him. They knew that they deserved infinite punishment for their sins. They knew that only God's eternal Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, had ever lived sinlessly. They knew that when he died it could not have been for his own sins, and it was therefore for the sins of others. They knew that there was no hope for sinners except in Christ. They knew that they had to repent and to turn again to the God whom they had offended. All this they knew. They believed it to be true. And they acted upon it. They did turn to God, believing that he would accept them for the sake of Christ. They trusted the Saviour. And so it was that they came to be 'in Christ' and to have every spiritual blessing in him.

Many people do not know the gospel for they have never heard it. That was not true of Paul, nor of the Ephesian believers, nor of us. Others have heard the gospel, but do not believe it to be true. Yet others have heard the gospel and believe it to be true, but stop there. They never actually come to depend on the Lord Jesus Christ. They do not trust him. This raises certain questions in every believer's mind: 'Why am I not like those people? What makes me different? Why have I come to be saved, when they have not?'

Paul's inspired answer leaps from the page in front of us. If we have any spiritual blessings at all, it is because God gave them to us, and he is the one who must be praised (1:3). But why, oh why, did he give them to us? It is because 'He chose us [in Christ] before the foundation of the world ... having predestined us ... according to the good pleasure of his will' (1:4-5). The reason for his choice, then, is found in him and not in us.

Were we more deserving than others? No, because he did what he did 'to the praise of the glory of his grace' (1:6). The source of God's election is to be found in his loving-kindness, and in that alone. He deals with us 'according to the riches of his grace which he made to abound towards us' (1:7-8). He does it 'according to his good pleasure which he purposed in himself' (1:9). There is no escaping what God's Word is teaching here. The reason that people are saved is that they are 'predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will' (1:11).

All who are saved are saved by God's grace. Nothing has moved him to save us except his own heart. He desired to do it out of his own good pleasure. It is undeserved love streaming from the very essence of God that has brought us out of our condition of sin and misery into the everlasting comfort of salvation. How we should glorify God for his grace!

This, too, is a theme Paul touches on here. God has predestined us to be to the praise of the glory of his grace (1:5-6). He has saved us that we 'should be to the praise of his glory' (1:12,14). In heaven we shall give him the praise that he deserves. But the epistle will teach us that we are to glorify him for his grace in the here and now, and that we are to do it with both our lips and our lives.

Before we leave our three questions and answers, let us bring home one more important truth. No one enters into spiritual blessings without divine election. We must therefore never play down what the Bible teaches about God's sovereign grace. We must never blur the edges, or blunt the sharpness of anything that God has revealed. We must never alter what the Lord has spoken in the hope of making it easier for man to accept. Grace is the theme of heaven and it should be our theme on earth. We should declare what the Bible teaches both boldly and warmly. He loved us because he loved us. We love him because he first loved us. We did not choose him, but he chose us.

This said, we must remember that no elect person enters into any spiritual blessing whatever without trusting in Christ. And nobody trusts in Christ without hearing the word of truth, the gospel of salvation. Just as surely as God has decreed who will be saved, so has he decreed by what means men and women will be brought to salvation. It is through the proclamation of the truth. It is through the spreading of the gospel. There is, then, no contradiction between the doctrines of grace and the practice of biblical evangelism. Both are found together and it is impossible to separate them. We are as enthusiastic about one as we are about the other. Evangelism would be a perpetual failure if election were not true. But it is thrilling to those who believe what God says about his eternal decrees. Each conversion is then seen for what it is– the accomplishment in time and space of an eternal plan. We see unfolding before our eyes what God planned in eternity. We have no idea who the elect are. We find out, as we see one and another coming to faith in the Lord Jesus Christ.

We must now deal with some common objections to the doctrine of election. The following paragraphs will not interest many of you who read this book. Ephesians 1:1-14 conquered your hearts long ago and you are at peace with its teachings. You experience no stress or tension when you hear about predestination and election. But you might care to remember that it was not always like that. When many of you heard these truths for the first time, they kept you awake at night. Others of you were filled with rebellion, so that you almost felt like giving up the Christian faith. Others of you accepted these truths, but for a while the effect on your life was to make you very brittle, and antagonistic to other Christians.

Other readers are still finding Paul's teaching on election rather strange and more than difficult to believe. You sincerely doubt whether the interpretation of Ephesians 1:3-14 you have just read is a correct understanding of the Word of God. The questions and answers which follow are not intended to prove that I am right and you are wrong. Their purpose is simply to help you come to settled conclusions in your own thinking through a fuller consideration of what the Scriptures teach.

This view believes that God, being all-knowing, looked down history and saw beforehand who would believe. He then chose those people to be his children. To back up this conviction, this view appeals to Romans 8:29: 'For whom he foreknew, he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, that he might be the first-born among many brethren.' It also appeals to 1 Peter 1:2: 'elect according to the foreknowledge of God the Father'.

In English dictionaries the word 'foreknow' means 'to know in advance'. In the Bible, its meaning is much fuller. In Acts 2:23 Peter, preaching on the Day of Pentecost, says that Jesus was delivered to the cross 'by the carefully planned intention and foreknowledge of God'. To him, foreknowledge clearly meant predetermination.

Of equal interest is the Bible's use of the word 'know'. It often means 'to love intimately' and is the normal word used to describe the deep love expressed in the marriage bond. So when God says to Israel, 'You only have I known of all the families of the earth' (Amos 3:2), he is talking of his deep love for the nation which had led him to choose it as his own. The Good Shepherd uses the verb in exactly the same sense when he says, 'I know my sheep' (John 10:14).

This is how the verb 'to foreknow' is used in Romans 8:29, which we have quoted above. It is particular people who are foreknown here, and not something done by them. God predestined them to be conformed to the image of his Son, because he had intimately loved them beforehand. In the same way, we can understand 1 Peter 1:2 to mean 'elect because intimately loved beforehand by God'

The view expressing this objection believes that God elects us because he sees that we are going to believe. It holds that election is caused by believing. But this is not so. The exact opposite is true. Believing is caused by election: 'And as many as had been appointed to eternal life believed' (Acts 13:48).

This is exactly what Paul is not saying in Ephesians 1:3-14. Writing to the individual men and women and children who made up Christ's church at Ephesus and elsewhere, he says, 'God has blessed us ... he chose us, having predestined us... he has made us accepted in the Beloved... we have obtained an inheritance, being predestined ... that we who first trusted in Christ should be to the praise of his glory' 1:3-6,11-12, italics mine). It is individuals who have trusted Christ who are assured of their election. There is not a race or nation in sight.

The same is true in Romans 9-11, where Paul deals at greater length with the truth of election. Individuals are in mind. Isaac was chosen, but not Ishmael. Jacob was chosen, but not Esau. Individual branches are stripped from the olive tree that individual branches might be grafted in. Election is individual. Before the world was made, God chose me! That is the wonder of it all.

You are right! '"As I live", says the Lord God, "I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked"' (Ezek. 33:11). 'The Lord is ... not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance' (2 Peter 3:9).

How do we know that God does not want the wicked to perish? From the Bible! And how do we know that he has chosen certain people to be saved in an eternal decree of election? From the Bible! Let's not use the Bible to contradict the Bible. Let's not say, 'The parts of the Bible I like I will accept, but the parts I don't like I won't accept.' If we were to pick and choose like that, we would be putting our own reason above God's Word. Believing the Book means believing it all. Submitting to Scripture means embracing all that it says. We accept one truth and we accept the other; and both of them we accept gladly, because they are taught in the Word of God. What we do not accept is that human minds can plumb this mystery. How can both truths be equally true? It is too deep for us. We are too limited and, besides, our reasoning powers are spoiled by sin. We bow before the mystery, but we cannot explain it.

Once more, you are right. 'For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life' (John 3:16). 'For the Scripture says, "Whoever believes on him will not be put to shame." For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich to all who call upon him. For "whoever calls upon the name of the Lord shall be saved"' (Rom. 10:11-13).

All who want to be saved can be saved! God's Word is clear about this. Whoever you are, if you call on the Lord he will save you. This is God's promise and he will not break it. If you are unconverted as you read this, all the blessings of the gospel may be yours, now, if you will but turn from your sin to God, approaching him through the Lord Jesus Christ.

The problem is that men and women, left to themselves, do not want to be saved. The door of salvation is open, but they refuse to walk through it. Why is this? It is because man is a fallen creature. His whole nature is twisted and polluted by sin. He is spiritually dead. He will never move in a Godward direction unless God himself moves him in that way.

John 3:16 is gloriously true. But we should not forget that it is preceded by John 1:12-13: 'But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become children of God, even to those who believe in his name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.' Whoever wants to be saved may be so. But no one believes unless his nature is changed. No one's nature is changed, except by God. But why does God change some people's nature, and not others? Ephesians 1:3-14 has given us the answer. It is because he has chosen to.

Romans 10:11-13 is also gloriously true. But before Romans 10 comes Romans 9, where we read, 'For he says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion." So then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy... Therefore he has mercy on whom he wills, and whom he wills he hardens' (Rom. 9:15-16,18).

God's Word most certainly offers salvation to 'whoever'. It also most certainly teaches unconditional election. We must do the same. If we do not, we shall have invented our own religious system. The Bible calls that idolatry.

If there was anyone, anywhere, who deserved to be saved, but ended up lost, there would be some strength in this objection. The objection would also stand if the whole human race was composed of people deserving to be saved, with God choosing some and passing the others by.

But that is not the way it is, is it? Every man and woman, every boy and girl on earth is not only a sinner, but a willing sinner. He or she is in deliberate rebellion against God and wants to be the person he or she is. The guilt of all is plain. The wonder is that God saves anybody at all!

The eternal decree of election must be fair, because it is God's decree of election. God, by definition, is fair.

'He is the Rock, his work is perfect;
For all his ways are justice,
A God of truth and without injustice;
Righteous and upright is he' (Deut. 32:4).

Do we believe that, or don't we? If God has done something, then it is fair. If it is unfair, then God has not done it. This remains true whether we can see it or not. We do not see things as God does.

It is monstrous even to think of pointing the finger at God. 'Indeed, O man, who are you to reply against God? Will the thing formed say to him who formed it, "Why have you made me like this?" Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honour and another for dishonour? What if God, wanting to show his wrath and to make his power known, endured with much long-suffering the vessels of wrath prepared for destruction, and that he might make known the riches of his glory on the vessels of mercy, which he had prepared I beforehand for glory, even us whom he called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles?' (Rom. 9:20-24).

'God's will is always accomplished, isn't it? Seeing he has decided that certain people will be saved, there is no possibility that they will fail to be converted. Whatever we do, or don't do, they will come to faith. So what is the point of evangelism?'

There are some people who talk like that – usually those who are caricaturing the doctrine of election with a view to believing something else. Speaking for myself, I have never heard anyone who loves the doctrine of election speaking in that way – not even once.

The reason that we proclaim the gospel to all is that the Lord Jesus Christ commands us to do so (Matt. 28:18-20). Because we love him, we keep his commandments (John 14:15). It is the love of Christ that constrains us (2 Cor. 5:14). We would go to the work whether anyone was converted through it or not.

The doctrine of election does not kill evangelism. It inspires it. Two thousand years of church history well illustrate this point. Wherever election has been fervently believed there has been an evangelistic spirit. The Reformation was the greatest evangelistic movement since the Acts of the Apostles and the Bible's teaching on election was at its very centre. Most of the great preachers of the eighteenth-century Awakening passionately loved this truth. And countless love it still.

We know that the Good Shepherd has died for his sheep. We also know that when those sheep hear his voice, they will follow him. So we sound out the Good Shepherd's word wherever we can! Election stops us from giving up. This was Paul's experience as he evangelized Corinth. There had been a few conversions, but the overall response was one of opposition. 'Now the Lord spoke to Paul in the night by a vision, "Do not be afraid, but speak, and do not keep silent; for I am with you, and no one will attack you to hurt you; for I have many people in this city." And he continued there a year and six months, teaching the word of God among them' (Acts 18:9-11). What kept him going when the response was so unpromising? It was the knowledge that God had a people there. God's decree of election meant that there would be a certain harvest. So he stayed on and preached, and began to see that harvest being reaped.

Election does not kill evangelism. It is the mainspring which drives it. It moves us to take the message to the very worst, even to those who oppose all that we say. In the final analysis, the salvation of men and women does not depend on them, nor on us, but on God; and therefore there is hope.

God is indeed good to all men and women alike. His sun rises on both the evil and the good. He sends rain on the just and the unjust. But that he loves all men and women alike is not taught anywhere in the Word of God. What does Paul say in Romans 9:10-13? 'But when Rebecca also had conceived by one man, even by our father Isaac (for the children not yet being born, nor having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works but of him who calls), it was said to her, "The older shall serve the younger." As it is written, "Jacob I have loved, but Esau I have hated."'

Those who have never grasped this will always have problems with the doctrine of election. God's love is a distinguishing love. He is good to all but he does not love all. He gives blessings to some that he does not give to others. And this is true of spiritual blessings.

More than one person has said. 'I am a Calvinist on my knees and an Arminian on my feet.' Others tell us to pray as if everything depended on God, but to preach as if it all depended on man. Behind all this is the idea that we should keep our knowledge of election to ourselves and not speak of it to others – and certainly not to unbelievers.

This is absurd. Let us think it out. In communion with God, am I to rejoice in his eternal decrees, and then never to mention to others what has caused my heart to dance? Are we, in our prayer meetings, to take courage from the fact that God has a people whom he will surely save through the spreading of his gospel, and then never to breathe a word about this as we spread that gospel? Are we to thank the Lord for loving us before we loved him, and then never to speak of that love? Must there be constant tension between what we say to God and what we say to men?

It is impossible to be a Calvinist on your knees and an Arminian on your feet. Arminianism is the belief behind the first objection we considered earlier, and it is not true. Another of its errors is that it tells men and women that it is their response to the gospel which gives the message power to save. If they will not respond correctly, God can do nothing. God is thus at the mercy of man. Man's will binds God's actions, permitting him to work or preventing him from working. God has never commissioned any man to teach nonsense.

But even many people who are not Arminians never mention election to the unconverted. This raises a number of important questions. Do we honestly believe that we can help people by hiding part of God's Word from them? Is not all of God's Word for all people? Who are we to decide who should hear what? Our Lord Jesus Christ spoke openly about election in front of unbelievers, so why shouldn't we? How tenderly he addressed them in Matthew 11:28-30: 'Come to me, all you who labour and are heavy leaden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light.' But let us not forget that those words were immediately preceded by words which he spoke to his Father, and which the same people heard: 'I thank you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and prudent and have revealed them to babes. Even so, Father, for so it seemed good in your sight. All things have been delivered to me by my Father, and no one knows the Son except the Father. Nor does anyone know the Father except the Son, and he to whom the Son wills to reveal him' (Matt. 11:25-27).

These words of Jesus were also spoken to unbelievers: 'All that the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will by no means cast out' (John 6:37). 'No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him' (John 6:44). 'You do not believe, because you are not of my sheep, as I said to you' (John 10:26).

Many preachers today do not say what Jesus said in this last verse. They say to unbelievers, 'You are not Christ's sheep because you do not believe.' Jesus said exactly the opposite. He made it clear that his hearers did not believe because they were not of his sheep. It is not so that we may become sheep that we believe. We believe because we are sheep. The sheep are those people whom the Father has given to the Son. Jesus says so in John 10:29. He did not shrink from talking about election to unbelievers. The Christlike thing is to follow his example.

9. If some people are not elect, then they must have been predestined to damnation. How can a God who does that be the loving and merciful God of the Bible?

It is true that God has seen fit to pass some people by. He has hidden spiritual things from them, for it seemed good in his sight (Matt. 11:25). As the great Potter, from the same lump he has made vessels for honour and others for dishonour (Rom. 9:21). The Bible speaks of this as fact.

But these people he has passed by, what are they like? Are they spiritually neutral, neither good nor bad, but somewhere in the middle? Not at all! Without exception, they are willing sinners who every day choose the godless path they tread. They want to be like that. It is not that they are crying out to be saved and God is turning a deaf ear towards them. They are not interested in God and in godliness. They have no intention of repenting. By passing them by, God leaves them where they want to be.

Such people are responsible for their own ruin. If God did not pass them by, but gave them a new nature, they would certainly be saved. But what damns them, in fact, is not God's decision to pass them by. It is their own sin, for which they have no one to blame but themselves.

'The proof of the love and mercy of God is that he has not left the whole of mankind to perish in its sin and misery. Out of his mere good pleasure, and from all eternity, he has elected some of these callous rebels to everlasting life. He has decided to save them from their wretchedness by means of a Redeemer. Why he should do this we do not know. Why did he not just consign us all to the hell we deserve? Why did he not pass everybody by? Every man and woman was equally guilty and hopelessly lost. Nobody could have justly complained if God had turned his back on the whole race. But he did not. By sheer grace, he chose a people for himself. This fact shouts out that he is indeed the God of mercy and love that the Bible constantly teaches him to be.

'If I believed in election, I would have to go through life all the time wondering if I was elect or not.' This is how this objection is often expressed. But its fears are groundless.

A believer can ask himself many other questions, besides ones which are directly concerned with election. How is it that I have come to believe, when so many of my family and friends do not? Why do I now feel a sense of kinship with God, indeed of sonship? There can be only one explanation: God is at work in my life. And why would he do such a thing? Again, there can be only one explanation: it is because he has chosen to.

My salvation depends, then, on God. He chose me in grace. And this God is unchangeable. Having set his love on me, will he fail to bring me to heaven? Will he fail to save eternally what he has chosen to save? Will he fail to complete the work he has started?

Once the believer begins to reason in this way, his heart is flooded with new assurance. Do I love God? It is because he loved me first. Have I chosen him? It is because he chose me. My salvation is in God's hands, and not my own. How sure I can be about the future! I am going to glory! I could never be this sure of things if it all depended on me. Yes, 'The godly consideration of predestination, and our election in Christ, is full of sweet, pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of Christ' (Articles of the Church of England, no.17). How kind God is to have revealed to us the doctrine of election!

There is no objection to the Bible's teaching on election that can stand. In Ephesians 1:3-14 Paul was content to rejoice in it, and so should we be. He taught it to the whole church, including its children (who clearly were present when Ephesians was read out; see 6:1-3). We, too, should not hide it from anybody, under the mistaken notion that people are actually helped by hiding part of God's truth from them.

Perhaps there is somebody reading this book who has not yet turned from sin to God. We have seen that the truth of election provides you with no excuse for remaining as you are. But it does show you the way forward. Salvation is in God's hands. Therefore, if you would be saved, it is to God you must go. Be sure of this –if you desire him, it is because he desires you. He undertakes to save all who call on him. You cannot save yourself, but God saves eternally all those who come to him through Christ. Cast yourself at his feet now, and enter into all the blessings of the gospel that we have been speaking about.

If you are a Christian as you read this, will you not now stop your reading, and pause to worship? It is because God chose you in Christ before the foundation of the world that you have come to faith. Having come to Christ, you have been blessed with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in him. Previously you were not one of his people, but now you are. Once you were far off; now you are near. In the past you were damned, but now you are God's child. You were hell-bound; now you are racing towards your heavenly inheritance.