Here is my commentary on Ephesians 1:4. I am publishing these once or twice a week, but you can read all of the available articles at our web-site.
Ephesians 1:4
“… even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world that we should be holy and blameless before him.”
This runs on from the previous sentence: God has blessed us with very spiritual blessing in heavenly places even as he chose us …”
Again there is this verbal linking of the blessings of heaven with the world. It is vital that we do not put too much emphasis in our thinking on the separation of earth from heaven. Both are a part of God’s good creation.
There is a tendency in some religious circles to follow the error of the Gnostics, a religious cult that goes back to the time of Jesus. The Gnostics were a broad group of people who basically believed that there is a huge gap between heaven and earth and people are kept in bondage on the earth until they have the knowledge (Greek, gnosis) to allow their spirits to conquer the flesh. In their thinking everything that belonged to the spiritual was good while everything related to physical things was evil.
God made the world and declared that it was good. God made people and declared them to be “very good.” It is sin that separate us from God and disfigures the creation.
So God chose us before the foundation of the world to be a part of the redeemed, liberated kingdom.
“God chose us.”
There is a paradox at work and we must tread carefully lest we fall into error.
What does this mean? In what way did God choose us before the foundation of the world? Why did He choose some but not others? What part does my choice play in this?
So many questions in three words!
Some people from the Reformed, Presbyterian or Calvinist churches say that God’s choice is absolute. They stress the sovereignty of God. They would say God chose us and He did not choose others. They argue that Jesus only died for those He had chosen to save. Some go as far as to say that he predestined some to salvation and others he predestined to hell – this is an extreme Calvinist view.
This does not do justice to our freedom to act as choosing people. God created us with a capacity for love and that must give us the ability to choose not to love.
Our salvation requires two choices- God’s choosing of me and my choosing to respond to His love.
John 3:16 reminds us that God so loved the world- all people. His choice, His desire is that all people should be saved. Not everyone chooses to accept salvation; they reject His choice of them.
God chose us, but not in an exclusive way that says He didn’t choose others.
God knew before He created the world- before the foundation of the world, before the first day of creation- He knew us already and He chose us for His own.
Everything that has happened in my life worked to bring me to the place where I said “Yes” to Him.
God chose us “in Him.” The “him” is Christ (otherwise it would be “in himself”). The NLT helpfully adds this.
We are chosen in Christ. It was the will of the Father and the Son that we are chosen to eternal life. There is a determination of purpose and identity in that phrase. I am “in Christ”. My destiny is assured from the beginning “in Christ.” My assurance is that God chose me in Christ.
Before He created the world, God chose us. His plan was always to have a kingdom of people who would freely choose to love and serve Him. The devil has tried to thwart this kingdom, but God’s purposes prevail. Even temptation and testing provide opportunities for God’s grace to bring us closer to Him and for His choice of us to be vindicated.
We were chosen, a part of God’s master plan, His redeeming work. People may ask “Why did God let this thing happen?”, but His answer is always “I chose you for my own. Even this thing is a part of my eternal purpose for you.”
Before the so-called “Big Bang”, God was at work in my past. Geologists think they are clever to think in millions of years, but with God it is eternity to eternity- eternity before time and eternity beyond time.
We are chosen to be holy and blameless before Him.
Holy- I am set apart for God’s purpose. Before the world began Jesus chose me to be holy. This purpose of being called to serve God is more than a life-long journey. It started in eternity past and will be completed in eternity future. I am called to be a saint. A servant of God and that calling is an eternal calling.
Blameless- (in Greek amomos). We were chosen in order to be blameless- without charge or stain. We don’t force ourselves to be holy and blameless in order to be chosen. God has chosen us in order to make us that way.
It is not that God has in Christ chosen just to forgive us. He is making us blameless. There is an investigation going on. Satan is a prosecutor digging up our past, trying to trap us into sinning more. A case will be presented but God has already determined that we will be blameless. The evidence against us will be destroyed or ruled as inadmissible and the charges will be withdrawn. No case to answer.
Why? We are “in Christ” and therefore all accusations and judgements against us are nullified by His blood.
We shall be (and already are) holy and blameless before Him.
We dwell in the presence of God the Father. We stand before Him already. Having received life in Christ, we are sealed with the Holy Spirit and we are “before the Father.”
The judgement is already made in eternity that we are blameless. So we stand before God forgiven and restored. We are in the same existential state as Adam and Eve before they sinned.
Yes we will continue to sin, but we have been declared blameless. Yes we will fall short of the glory intended for us, but we continue to dwell in the presence of God Almighty.
So our life consists of becoming what God says we already are.- holy and blameless. We have been chosen to become the holy and blameless people He has called into existence.
Is the future of your sitting in your pews?
Maybe
… but probably not.
The future of your church isn’t the legacy generation. Your seniors, whether Boomers or Builders, have largely brought your church to where it is – for better or worse. But they won’t be around in a few years, most haven’t invited anyone to join them for worship in months or years. Your legacy generations are definitively not the future of your church.
And as hard as it is to swallow, the future of your church isn’t the youth. We know that at best 60 percent of them will leave the church forever at the first possible opportunity for the them to quit. And the 40 percent who remain involved in the church will almost certainly be involved in some other church in some other city. The youth may be the future of somebody’s church, but they’re not the future of your church.
The same goes for your children … children turn into youth who largely turn away from the church.
That pretty much leaves your young adults. It’s true that young adults are the hope and the future of the church. They’re the ones who buy houses and invest in the community, including their church. But are they the future of your church?
Not if they’ve been there for more than a year.
Young adults who’ve been members of your congregation for twelve months or more are unlikely to invite anyone into the congregation on a consistent basis (or even at all). Most of them have already invited “everyone” they know and they’ve lost their zeal for inviting. Which is to say, young adults may be the future of the church, but not if they’re your longer term members.
All that’s to say that the future of your church, should you plan on your church being around a decade or so from now, is in the hands of those who aren’t there yet …
Scripture
Do not let anyone who delights in false humility and the worship of angels disqualify you for the prize. Such a person goes into great detail about what he has seen, and his unspiritual mind puffs him up with idle notions.
Observation
Just as we received Christ, we are to continue to live in Him, strengthened in faith as we walk with Him.
Avoid all hollow and deceptive philosophy based on worldly or human principles, rather than on Christ. We have been given all the fullness of Christ. We are united with Christ in His death and resurrection.
We were dead in our sins, but Christ made us alive in Him. He forgave our sins, cancelled the Law (crucified it, in fact!), and disarmed the powers and principalities.
So we need to beware of any attempt to take us back to the Law, or to the worship of angels, or other deceptions.
Application
People who claim to be more spiritual than they really are can lead us into all kinds of deception.
People who claim to have had angelic visitations, and talk about them all the time, can seem to be more spiritual than the rest of us., but they can lead us to a place where we worship the angels and other created beings, leading us away from Christ.
We can celebrate with those who have genuine experiences that are out of the ordinary. In fact we are supposed to be aware constantly of the spiritual realm.
Deception comes in when all we want is the angelic experience. When meeting with angels is more important to us than meeting with Christ, there is a problem.
Paul talks about human philosophy and the Jewish law as well as worshipping angels. All of these tings may be interesting, but our focus must always be on worshipping and living in Christ.
If I focus my eyes on Jesus, then I may have amazing experiences of the power of the Holy Spirit or of angels. But if I focus on the experiences, I may quickly lose sight of Jesus.
Prayer
Lord, may you always be right in front of me. Let nothing else take my focus away from you. Amen.
Scripture
“But I will show love to the people of Judah. I will free them from their enemies– not with weapons and armies nor horses and charioteers, but by my power as the Lord their God.”
Observation
The Lord tells Hosea to go and marry a prostitute. This will illustrate Israel’s unfaithfulness to the Lord.
His wife Gomer bears three children named Jezreel, Lo-ruhana (“Not loved”), and Lo-ammi (“Not my people”).
God will not show love to Israel, but He will favour Judah. Yet, the time will come when He unites the two nations under one leader.
Application
While preaching a mixed message to God’s people, Hosea does offer God’s blessing on the people of Judah. The Lord will free them from their enemies, but not by military might. Instead, He will set them free under His own mighty power.
The Lord does not require the weapons and methods of the world to achieve His purposes. He does use political and military methods at times, but He does not have to rely on them.
The important thing is that we look to the Lord to rescue us and not to human strength. Paul says in 1 Corinthians, “the weapons of our warfare are not the weapons of the flesh.”
When we face spiritual battles, impossible battles, it is the Lord we trust, not merely our own limited resources.
When we try to make things happen out of our own abilities, then disaster will follow. When we commit our ways to the Lord, and trust Him to bring the victory, then we will see miracles happen.
Prayer
Lord I thank you for your great love. I thank you that when you fight for me using your strength, then the victory will come. Amen.
Is the so-called “Voice” to Parliament a way to real Aboriginal reconciliation or is it just another good but wasteful idea? Were the people who came up with the idea representative of the general Aboriginal community?
Jacinta Price writes:
The Uluru Statement of the Heart proposes a ‘Voice’ representing Indigenous Australians be enshrined within the constitution, to enable Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples to be formally consulted on legislation and policy affecting their communities.
Minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt has suggested such a ‘Voice’ could be legislated rather than embedded within our constitution.
However, before we debate how, and in what form a ‘Voice’ might be implemented, we need to discuss some important aspects.
The first matter of concern, who was representing me when the all big decisions were being made?
Going back to 2017 when the First Nations National Constitutional Convention was held at Uluru, the representatives in attendance were invited by nominees of the Referendum Council; and not elected by Indigenous people.
Much of the media attention has ignored the fact that there were and still are dissenting – and unheard – Indigenous voices throughout the entire process of the development of the Uluru Statement of the Heart.
Secondly, for far too long Aboriginal people have been portrayed as being one homogenous group of people who all think the same; and the Uluru Statement has now further entrenched this idea. The reality is, this could not be further from the truth.
We don’t have one voice and we never have. This has been a construct that undermines us.
The Palawa of Tasmania have real, genuine problems that need to be addressed. At the other end of the country, the Tiwi also have real, genuine problems that need to be addressed. And in the middle there are the Warlpiri, with their own set of real problems. And many other group with their own problems as well.
To try to put them all in the one basket and to treat them as if they are all the same is a grotesque denial of their rights to see themselves as different and distinct linguistic and cultural groups, with their own distinct histories of contact with Europeans and experience of colonisation.
We would not want to send Tiwi and Warlpiri to Tasmania to sort out their problems for them and we wouldn’t expect Palawa to come to the NT to sort out the problems of remote communities. Each of these groups are the only ones who can solve their own problems in their own unique way.
And what of our non-Indigenous loved ones and relatives. A clear majority of those who identify as Indigenous now have children with those who don’t. In the southern cities of Sydney and Melbourne, over 80% of Indigenous people are coupled with non-Indigenous partners and have children. Roughly the same percentage of their children identify as Indigenous.
Do our non-Indigenous loved ones have no say in the future of their own children and grandchildren?
Thirdly, as Indigenous people, we all know that those with powerful positions within our communities tend to have most of the resources and most of the control. Those who have managed to take advantage of the plentiful resources available in the Aboriginal industry have done so without effecting much change for the most vulnerable.
Do we imagine that a ‘Voice’ will empower the marginalised or will it entrench those who already maintain control of the resources that flow into Aboriginal disadvantage? While there are many community controlled organisations working tirelessly to stem disadvantage, we are acutely aware of those embedded within some Aboriginal organisations and institutions, who are there for their own personal and financial gains.
Will yet another bureaucracy such as a legislated ‘Voice’ simply give more power to those who haven’t yet demonstrated that they can solve the critical issues our marginalised Australians are faced with?
Truth telling is as much a responsibility we should put upon ourselves as it is for our entire nation in understanding our combined history. The real question — which did not appear in the Uluru Statement — is ‘what are we going to do for ourselves?’
In practical terms, stripping back bureaucracy to support grassroots decision-making from community to community suggests real empowerment — as opposed to an umbrella ‘Voice’ that we will never truly gain consensus on, because we are not simply one people.
These issues require robust debate so as not to push this process along blindly, and then suffer the consequences later.
A church without God, seems kind of pointless to me. Some people tried it anyway. It turns out you have to have a reason to belong, something bigger than yourself– like Jesus. Vague belief in nothing much at all won’t keep people engaged.
We’ve all heard over the past few years of the move among Nones to start something like church, with all the bells and whistles, talks and coffee, singing and platforms. Something like church but with one small variable – no Jesus.
They began to meet in buildings across all the funky cities in the world and things blossomed quickly. They gathered to hear inspiring talks and sing anthems such as “Livin’ on a Prayer” (no, seriously!), and fill the void that church once filled before things got seriously secular.
Proof if you need it that it’s not really the case that they love Jesus but hate the church, it’s more the other way around!
We’ve all heard how that worked out too. Things declined quite quickly, despite only being a seven year project so far. It’s as if these secular churches compressed the life cycle of an entire church movement, birth through to death, in a petri-dish experiment, even at the time that the Nones are increasing in number.
And now there’s a great article exploring the psychology behind what went wrong in the latest copy of The Atlantic. You can read the whole piece by Faith Hill here.
It’s interesting that of the groups to survive, it’s those that were built around ex-religious people who replaced love for Jesus and the church with distrust/dislike of Jesus and the church, that have survived. In other words, communities need to have a centre, even if it’s a negative one. As it turns out the desire for community itself is not strong enough to hold the community together.
Which kinda reminds us as Christians that community is not the goal of the gospel, but the fruit of the gospel. As Hill states in the article:
If the sudden emergence of secular communities speaks to a desire for human connection and a deeper sense of meaning, their subsequent decline shows the difficulty of making people feel part of something bigger than themselves. One thing has become clear: The yearning for belonging is not enough, in itself, to create a sense of home.
And it’s not that the non-religious are any lazier than the average church attendee. They did their fair share of chair-stacking, event organisation, roster-writing, and goodness knows what else goes in to creating a weekly meeting for the (un)faithful. But at the core, that’s not enough, as Alan Cooperman, the director of religion research at Pew Research Center, observed:
On what basis would you pull them together? Being uninterested in something is about the least effective social glue, the dullest possible mobilizing cry, the weakest affinity principle, that one can imagine.
But here’s what’s really interesting, and it’s a reminder to us as pastors and church leaders lest we forget; the key to church appears to be that it offers something transcendent.
Anthropologist Richard Sosis, who studies the history of religious communes is quoted in the article as saying that without it, transcendence, there is little meaningful reason to meet:
… there has to be a sense of transcendence … Transcendence is what gives the community a higher level of meaning than going to Johnny’s Little League game.
Okay, okay, Johnny’s Little League game may occasionally be more exciting than church can be, no argument there, but what it offers is an immanence that ultimately dissipates the moment one leaves the playing field. As Hill observes:
It might mean that ideals they already espouse—such as helping others, or finding wonder in nature—get elevated to a sacred level. The irony is that to get away from religion, they may need to re-create it.
But we knew that already, didn’t we? Those of us who have read Charles Taylor. We knew that the secular frame needs to have a story bigger than itself in order to sustain itself. And we knew from listening ad infinitum to that David Foster Wallace talk, that there is no such thing as an atheist and that we all worship.
And it takes a lot of hard work, money, time, effort and emotional smoke and mirrors to make the non-transcendent even look vaguely transcendent. It’s a task that would tax the Wizard of Oz. And then once you turn your back the whole thing can easily collapse into immanence again. I mean, whose got the time and energy for that? Not the Nones, if the evidence of their numerical collapse in a few short years is any indication.
Of course there’s more than just transcendence. Or to put it another way, transcendence needs to look like something if a community is going to survive the biggest threat to its existence- its members.
Think about it. Who are the biggest threat to the existence of your church community? The community members themselves. And that’s what we have in common with all communities. And that’s just in the central meeting! We do gatherings with each other the rest of the week with all sorts of diverse people from church. How do we stop that tearing itself apart?
It’s at this point, however, the church of Jesus Christ has a distinct advantage over Jesus-less ekklesia. When communities fall into strive and unforgiveness, how is that resolved? When Christ’s church is unforgiving we read the command “Forgive one another as God in Christ has forgiven you.” How do Christless churches leverage forgiveness. Where, or Who, is their lodestar?
And love? Today love is love is love is love ad infinitum! But how does that stack up with “This is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and gave His Son as a propitiation for our sins.”
And never mind inside a church meeting, what about the rest of the week? What would compel us to bear someone else’s burdens better than the reality that in so doing we “fulfil the law of Christ”?
And the list goes on. It turns out that the centre of the community has to be strong enough to keep it together, and healthy enough to keep it a safe place to be. Jesus ticks all those boxes in the most transcendent way possible.
And lastly, and perhaps most importantly, our eschatology and hope draws us, keeps us gathering. Hebrews is instructive here: “Do not neglect meeting together, as some are in the habit of doing, and all the more as you see the Day approaching.” It’s not simply that we’re gathering around something that will transcend, it’s that we’re meeting in anticipation of something – of Someone – who will descend! Our hope is not otherworldly transcendence, but a this-worldly descending by King Jesus.
Faith Hill writes in The Atlantic:
Some leaders of Sunday Assembly and Oasis told me they’re trying to make those weekly meetings so interesting, so entertaining, so powerful that people will keep showing up.
To which I might say “Ouch, that sounds scarily familiar.” Perhaps it’s better to offer our people the one thing that differentiates us – the one Person who, as Ephesians tells us, contains all of God’s unsearchable riches – Jesus himself. I don’t think we’re good enough to do interesting, entertaining and powerful in such a way to draw people and make them stick.
The mystery product of God made known! I know that there are many times I don’t want to gather in community with God’s people because the event itself is not particularly interesting, certainly not entertaining and definitely feels on the weaker side of powerful. But because Jesus is there it changes everything and that makes it worth showing up.
Maybe the Secular Church will rise again as the number of Nones increases further. Maybe not. But without Jesus at the centre, it will struggle to last another decade, never mind two millennia.
Do you ever feel like everything these days is sleight of hand or outright lying?
Here is the “zero emissions” excavator. From wattsupwiththat.com
Here is my commentary on Ephesians 1:3. I am publishing these once or twice a week, but you can read all of the available articles at our web-site.
Ephesians 1:3
“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. He has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.”
“Blessed” (literally “well said of”) could be thought of being similar to praise. “Praise be to God…” We bless God in praising Him, and He blesses us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places.
Praise be to God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Hallelujah! He has blessed us with every blessing!
We have so much to praise God for. Every day is a blessing, but every day for eternity is like infinite blessing, bigger than we can count,in the presence of God. The blessings are infinite in number and infinite in size and intensity. This life is just the beginning and the blessings we enjoy now are just the shadow of the blessings in eternity.
Paul starts by blessing us with grace and peace but then turns his attention to blessing God.
To praise God, or to bless Him, does not impart anything to Him as such. But it does add to His glory. People from every tribe and nation are praising God, and every one of these people, every single act of praise, is a testimony to God’s love and mercy. Everyone of these is a light that adds to the unspeakably bright light that shines from His throne.
The testimony is a testimony to the world and to the cosmic system that is held in bondage by satan.
Every time we bless God or praise Him, we are saying to satan, “You are wrong! We will not side with you any more, for God has saved us through Jesus Christ our Lord!”
The world watches as we worship and it trembles- either in fear or conviction. So our praise or “blessing” of God is an impartation of glory to the Father. When we do it well, people are moved to join in praise and to repent of their sins.
God has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the highest heaven.
We cannot add anything to God, we cannot impart anything to Him through words or actions because He is self-sufficient. He doesn’t need anything from us. We can only impart glory to Him through our blessing of Him.
God has imparted to us every blessing, that is every spiritual blessing. God has already given to us every blessing. Our response to bless Him is a response to what He has first done in us. God initiates the blessing and we respond by blessing Him.
When we think of blessings, our first thought often is of physical blessings. We see evidence of God’s blessing in our everyday life, and we think that we are blessed. This might be a financial blessing, a healing or a family reconciliation.
These things are important, but they are like an iceberg. We see the tip and praise God for the eruption of a spiritual blessing into the physical realm. Like the iceberg, there is so much beneath the surface that we cannot see with our physical senses or appreciate with our cognitive (thinking) abilities.
These are spiritual blessings and they must be apprehended by the spirit- not the flesh or the soul. Our spirit is the part of our nature that was activated, “born again”, when we were saved. It is the faculty that relates directly to the Holy Spirit.
He has given us every spiritual blessing. The thing about the Father that many people never seem to understand is that He is a generous Father. He is not miserly nor mean-spirited. He is the God of abundance. The name El-Shaddai often translated as “God of hosts” can also mean “God 0of breasts”- He has much food to give to those who draw close to Him.
God has held nothing back from His people.
What are the spiritual blessings He has given us?
They can by summarised in one word- Himself. Every spiritual blessing comes from the Father of Lights, James tells us. God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit- one God in three “persons”- has poured Himself into us. The self-giving of God manifests as numerous spiritual blessings.
These spiritual blessings are primarily in the heavenlies, although they do some times manifest in the present physical world. We get a glimpse now, but one day we shall see them clearly.
To walk in these blessings we have to direct our attention to the heavenly realm. It is no good being totally focused on the earthly realm because only 1% of the blessing is here.
This is not about becoming “too heavenly minded to be of any earthly use”- which is a mocking, satanic curse designed to discourage believers from being disciples. We focus on heaven to be effective on earth. We want the blessing of the “highest heaven” (epouraniois) so that we can know the will and dominion of the Father and bring it to earth.
Prayer is the process of bringing the issues and situation we see on earth and laying them at the Father’s feet so that His will is done on earth as it is in heaven.
A word about heaven. In Jewish thought there were three heavens. The first heaven consists of the sky and the atmosphere, which is an extension of the earth, and still practically under the domain of satan, the prince of the air. The second heaven is the starry sky, the celestial realm, the physical universe which is beyond the earth but influences it. Then there is the third heaven or the highest heaven which Paul was taken up to (1 Corinthians 12:2). this is the realm of the presence of God.
In this verse, Paul uses ( epouraniois) the upper haven which is the third heaven where God’s presence is central.
By MATT WALSH @MATTWALSHBLOGJuly 17, 2019
As I have argued in the past, left-wing gender theory can be entirely dismantled and debunked with one simple question: What is a man? All of the talking points, all of the sermonizing, all of the stuff about “transgenderism” and “gender fluidity” and “gender spectrums” — all of it is blown to pieces by a question that my six-year-old could answer. No leftist who espouses gender theory can provide a coherent answer to this question. Few will even attempt it.
It is a classic double-edged sword. If “man” has no objective definition, then it is meaningless for a woman to identify as one. A statement like “transmen are men” is hollow and absurd if the word “man” has no meaning. But if it does have meaning, then we must admit that the meaning of the word stands independent of anyone’s feelings or opinions on the matter. If the word “man” means something, then it is possible for someone to wrongly identify as one. We can, in that case, compare their identity claims against the objective meaning of the term and determine whether their claim is correct or incorrect. Leftists can’t have that, of course, but neither can they have the alternative. If “man” has no definition, their position is destroyed. If it does, their position is destroyed. They lose either way. And they know it, so most will simply avoid the question and continue using words they can’t and won’t define.
But this week, a relatively prominent leftist made the mistake of not avoiding the question. Best of all, this particular leftist is a doctor. Dr. Eugene Gu, a self-described “surgeon-scientist,” made a decidedly unscientific claim on Twitter:
It’s a scientific and medical fact that men can get pregnant and also have abortions. Trans men and non-binary individuals are human beings who deserve to be acknowledged by society. They choose their own identity—not me, not you, not any doctor, and certainly not any politician.
Rather than mock this superstitious nonsense, I asked him the unanswerable (for a leftist) question:
Doctor, what is a man? Please provide a definition. Thank you.
Read the rest of the article here
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