EPHESIANS: ETERNALLY ENCLOSED IN GOD’S PLAN

Part I: Eternally In Union With God The Father

(Ephesians 1:1-6)

I. Introduction

A. Paul wrote Ephesians in his first Roman imprisonment as an encyclical letter to be read by the churches of Asia Minor (Ryrie Study Bible, KJV, 1978, p. 1672: “Introduction to the Letter of Paul to the Ephesians”).

B. It was evidently written to edify believers who would be concerned over Paul’s imprisonment that they might be confident in God’s sure work to establish and complete the Church regardless what happened to Paul, Ibid.

C. Ephesians 1:1-6 thus begins with a comforting focus on every believer’s eternal union with God the Father:

II. Eternally In Union With God The Father, Ephesians 1:1-6.

A. Paul’s typical opening greeting stated his authority as an apostle of Jesus Christ by God’s will to believers with his typical call that God’s grace and resulting peace might be the experience of his readers, Eph. 1:1-2.

B. The apostle then declared that God the Father is to be praised for blessing us believers in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly realms in Christ, Ephesians 1:3 NIV. There thus exists no blessing for a believer in Christ yet to acquire that he does not already possess when he believes in Jesus as his Savior!

C. These blessings are based on “the work of the three Persons of the Trinity: the selection of the Father (vv. 4-6), the sacrifice of the Son (vv. 7-12), and the seal of the Spirit (vv. 13-14)” (Bib. Know. Com., N. T., p. 616).

D. God the Father graciously selected us believers in Christ one day to be in His heavenly presence both separate from sin in holiness as well as absent the blame of sin, Ephesians 1:4-6:

1. God chose us believers in Christ in eternity past, Ephesians 1:4a KJV, NIV. A Calvinist tends to supply an elliptical infinitive “to be” between the words “us” and “in Him” in this verse to conclude that God chose us to be in Christ so as to give us an immediate gift of faith to trust in Christ when we hear the Gospel. However, the Greek text does not provide a “to be” infinitive in this verse (U. B. S. Grk. N. T., 1966, p. 664; Nestle-Aland, Nov. Test. Graece, 1973, p. 490; Hay Kaine Diatheke, 1972, p. 585)!

2. The goal unto which God chose us believers in Christ is that we might be holy and blameless in His “sight,” Eph. 1:4b NIV. If “sight” is interpreted in the Hebraistic, figurative sense to mean God’s viewpoint, a Calvinist can conclude that God chose us “to be” in Christ so that we might be justified, that is, that we might be positionally “holy and blameless” in God’s viewpoint. However, the NIV phrase “in His sight” or the KJV phrase “before Him” translates the Greek preposition katenopion (Ibid., U. B. S. Grk. N. T.), and like enopion, this preposition has been incorrectly translated in the Hebraistic figurative sense of “viewpoint” when it should mean only one’s physical presence (Moulton & Milligan, The Vocab. of the Grk. Test., 1972, p. 335, 220). In other words, the goal of God’s election in Ephesians 1:4 is that we believers might end up experientially separate from sin and without blame in God’s heavenly presence!

3. Also, Ephesians 1:5 reveals that the means by which this experiential holiness and blamelessness is achieved is God’s predestining us to the huiothesian, the “adoption to sonship” (NIV) or “adoption of children” (KJV). If this adoption is seen as a positional truth, a Calvinist can hold that God predestined us to be justified when we were “adopted” as His sons at salvation as in Galatians 4:5. However, Romans 8:23 uses this word huiothesian (Ibid., U. B. S. Grk. N. T., p. 550) to refer experientially to the rapture!

4. In summary, then, (a) a Calvinist may interpret Ephesians 1:4-5 to mean that God by predestination in eternity past chose who would trust in Christ, that they might receive a gift of faith to believe in Him to be justified when they hear the Gospel. (b) However, the absence of an elliptical infinitive “to be” in the Greek text at v. 4a and the true definition of katenopion as God’s heavenly presence in v. 4b leads us to interpret Ephesians 1:4-5 differently: namely, in eternity past, God foreknew who would trust in Christ of their own will, so He chose them to end up in His heavenly presence without their sin nature and without a record of sin following Christ’s Bema Seat (1 Cor. 3:10-15). To achieve this goal, God then planned for the rapture to occur to take believers to be with Him in heaven! (c) We hold to this latter interpretation!

5. This entire plan of God was made to bring glory to His unmerited favor to us in Christ by Whom He has made us accepted in His Beloved Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, Ephesians 1:6!

Lesson: God the Father determined from eternity past that all of us who He then foreknew would believe in Christ would one day end up in His heavenly presence separate from sin and from sin’s record to the glory of His grace.

Application: May we rejoice and relax in God the Father’s gracious eternal union with us in His Beloved Son!