issue, sometimes called predestination, has divided Christianity and damaged the Church's understanding of God.

In Holy Scripture a foundational statement on this issue appears in the Apostle Paul's letter to the church in Ephesus. In Paul's introduction to this significant circular letter to the churches via Ephesus, sent out from his prison cell in Rome, the inspired Word awesomely says –

This Scripture refers to a unique act of God which preceded the creation of His universe, if words mean anything. But before understanding the nature of this act of God we need first to understand the nature of this God.

vital to remember that the eternal and infinite nature of God necessarily precedes any act of God relative to the universe or anything in it!

The Bible's revelation of the eternal nature of God includes an infinite attribute which has become known as omniscience, or all-knowing. Put simply: this means that there was never a time when God did not know everything about everything!

It should not be hard to understand therefore that this unchanging nature of God not only precedes but is also unavoidably the basis of all decisions of God relative to all that exists.

This means that God's choosing of all believers 'in Christ' before the 'foundation of the world' to be His own, as described in the Scripture above, is more than from a knowledge of individual decisions to surrender to the claims of Christ made by persons in evangelistic meetings.

However, we have a problem built into the natural process of our understanding, for humanly we may know a future event because it can be based on our own action or decision in the present. It is subtly deceptive to begin to think of God's behaviour within this framework of our own human experience. But this is not appropriate or true!

God's knowledge of the future is not based on His decisions in the past. It is the reverse of this. In other words, God's decision in the past informs us of the certain future as He knows it!

the mistaken idea that God's decision in the past determines the future of human behaviour effectively reduced a sense of responsibility and accountability for behaviour and the choices made, as though we are simply products of a divine decision of predestination with its inevitable consequences. This thinking led to Augustine and Calvin's idea that –
  • the redeemed in Christ are redeemed because God chose them to demonstrate His mercy; and
  • the damned are damned because God chose them to demonstrate His justice.

This view, apart from its Neoplatonic elements transmitted through Augustine, was in Calvin's time largely a reaction to the works-based salvation of medieval Catholicism. As is typical of reactions, it swung to its opposite extreme, making salvation a product of predetermined grace arbitrarily attributed without reference to the voluntary response of the individual, so it became Irresistible Grace.

Explaining God's behaviour or methodology by reference to our perceptions of the experience of salvation in Christ may be natural and sincere but it misses the fundamental Biblical view of God, that His actions arise directly from His nature, which includes the omniscience of His intellect as much as it includes the virtue of His character.

truth then, nothing in God's past behaviour reduces our human responsibility in the present. Rather, God's pre-creation choice of all believers 'in Christ' because He knows all things, assures every believer that nothing which has subsequently occurred in all creation and its history since the beginning has the ability to undermine the Christian obedience of any who are 'in Christ'.

This brings us to the practical purpose behind this foundational statement to our understanding in Ephesians concerning God's pre-creation election of all believers 'in Christ'.

was written as a message to produce a practical result, for God does not dabble in doctrine.

This truth arms the believer with the understanding that everything in creation and in all its history which has ever occurred has been with the welfare of every believer in God's mind. Therefore nothing, absolutely nothing, has the capacity to destroy God's beneficent purpose for the life of each believer, if that believer walks with obedient confidence toward God who is over all.

This Christian obedience has as its goal of affection to become like Him who first called them into His grace in Jesus. Thus, there is no falling in and out of salvation and never can be!

Neither is God an overlord above creation who simply uses humanity's destiny to display His attributes, The Scripture "for God so loved the world ('kosmos'*)" would mean nothing if Christ did not die for all, even for those who reject Him.

servants of this God, there is nothing that can intimidate or defeat those who trust in Him more than in themselves!