Ephesians 1:4a – The Meaning of “Chose”

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world …

Summary: Paul’s insights can be logically challenging. The Word of God can seem non-sensical from a worldly point of view. Viewed correctly, everything makes sense.

When we try and imagine a time before the universe existed, we draw a blank. It is tempting to conclude that before the universe existed, there was nothing.

Nothing could be farther from the truth!

The first four words of the Bible tell us about that time, but they give us very little detail. “In the beginning God…” (Genesis 1:1)

In the beginning, before the universe was created, God existed. We know from the Bible that God is a spiritual being (John 4:24), and so it seems clear that the spiritual realm existed before the physical realm was created.

Therefore, it is not true that “nothing existed” before the universe was created. What is true is that nothing physical existed before the universe was created. The physical universe we live in does not contain a spiritual realm. The opposite is true. The spiritual realm contains the physical universe.

When we accept Jesus Christ into our lives as Lord and Savior, we also accept that he is alive now, today. He lives in the spiritual realm and communicates with us through the Bible, his Word, and his Holy Spirit. With billions of people on the planet now, Jesus needs to be in billions of places at once. From where he is in the spiritual realm, this is possible.

This brings us to today’s passage.

The God and Father of Jesus Christ is also our Father. All biological males are made in the image of God (Genesis 1:26). Since males contain the “seed” of the children that they have, it is not unthinkable that God, our Father, also contained our spiritual “seed” before we were born. If that is the case, then God, being all-knowing, would know each individual “seed” he contained.

If all of this is true, logical, and reasonable, then we could say with confidence that God knows “us in him before the creation of the world.” But that is not what Paul is saying. Paul takes this reasoning one step further and says that God “chose us in him before the creation of the world.”

The implication is that God chose some of his seed to be saved. This also suggests that he, by default, decided some of his seed would not be saved but would end up in the eternal trash heap.

That sounds rather heartless and horrible.

Because it sounds so unlike something a loving God would do, we have to consider the possibility that God chose all his seed for salvation.

So what happened? How come there are so many “bad seeds” in the mix?

Matthew, chapter thirteen, contains two parables that explain what happened. The first one talks about seed that is scattered on different kinds of soil. The second one is a story about an enemy that scatters weed seeds among the good seeds.

If I were a farmer and I went to the feed supply store for seed, I would pick out the best seed and “choose” that seed for my fields. So all the seed is “chosen” for salvation as it were. But on the way to the farm, some of the seed is scattered on the road, some in the ditch, and some in the berry vines. The rest of the seed makes it to the farmer’s field where an enemy has also planted tares or weeds that look like the plants my good seed will grow into.

God chose all of us for salvation. The fact that not all of us are saved does not change or invalidate that truth. We were chosen in him before the creation of the world.

Application: We can be confident that all of God’s “seed” has been chosen for salvation (1 Timothy 2: 3-4).

Food for Thought: How does knowing that all people are chosen by God impact how we see others, even those who behave badly?