Ephesians 1:3-5 English Standard Version

Spiritual Blessings in Christ

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,

Science Fiction is still fiction, but because it is sciency some people tend to accept it rather than accepting the truth. It is entertaining, the truth is too real for many, too painful. Well it should be.

In this offering I want to point to Ephesians 1:5.  “he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,” It is not a complete sentence, it is parsed. The sentence begins with “In love” which was at the end of verse 4. That sentence ends with verse 6 “to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.”

That sentence should read “In love he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will, to the praise of his glorious grace, with which he has blessed us in the Beloved.”

The driving force behind His predestination is love. God is love and He did this because He loved us enough to see that this was accomplished. His will had purpose, adoption HIs will had method, grace. His purpose should be praised but if we parse the sentence praise is often left out of the teaching in order to focus on the subject at hand which is often predestination.

Only 4 English translations mention love being the reason behind His will and they all parse the sentence leaving out praising God. If we continue to leave out the important parts of the conversation in our teachings we may end up with something that is absent of purpose and praise.

The whole truth is not a series of parsed statements. All the Word works together to accomplish God’s will. Many of these subjects are difficult to understand and difficult to teach in a pure logical method. We do not find logic is a word to describe faith.

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen.

Faith isn’t logical, it is assurance and conviction.

Romans 15:4 For whatever was written in former days was written for our instruction, that through endurance and through the encouragement of the Scriptures we might have hope.

Yesterday I wrote that history is written by the victors. Our bible is our history of His Victory.

It is not the only work of history but it is our history and our hope.

Romans 8:20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope. 

This is a concept that is not easily recognized and painting a picture of it that makes sense is not easy. But I will try. Be patient.

In the Si-Fi movie “Avengers: Infinity Wars” Doctor Strange uses the infinity stone to run through millions of timelines looking for the one and only one timeline that ends with an acceptable result. In that timeline Doctor Strange had to die in order for that timeline to play out to its acceptable conclusion in “Avengers: Endgame”. Yesterday I said we are the Chosen, chosen by grace. How did this timeline end up with this acceptable conclusion? God’s Endgame.

Ephesians 1:3-5 English Standard Version

Spiritual Blessings in Christ

3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places, 4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him. In love 5 he predestined us for adoption to himself as sons through Jesus Christ, according to the purpose of his will,

Since He chose us before He even created this timeline, is it possible that God ran millions of timelines to find the one and only timeline that produced this acceptable result?

The only way to wrap my head around that possibility is found in Jesus confronting the Father in the Garden and asking Him, [Is there any other way?] The Father’s silence in answering His Son sounds very much like, [No Son, you must die for this timeline to succeed.] Not a quote.

Do I know for a fact this is what God did? No, but this scenario in my finite mind does sound plausible. I do not teach it, I do not preach it but I have the Word of the Son that says “With God all things are possible.” So I cannot rule out just how God enacted His will to accomplish this acceptable result.

I know that I am Chosen.