The Doctrine of Election
Ephesians 1:4

Ephesians 1:4 reads, ”. . . just as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before Him in love.” Four key thoughts stand out in this short verse:

1. God chose us before the foundation of the world. You see, our security rests on the fact, not that we accidentally came across a believer at just the right time to hear the gospel and get saved, but on the fact that God chose us before the foundation of the world. He then used a faithful believer who would speak the words of salvation to which we would respond. And the glorious truth is that He will use each of us for that same purpose if we will be obedient to speak those words of salvation when God brings one he has chosen to us to hear the gospel.

2. We should be holy. God’s purpose for saving us is that we should be holy. There are lots of reasons we should be holy. One of the most significant is that our being holy is the magnet that draws others to us. Being holy is the same as being a light in the darkness.

3. We should be without blame. Of course when God sees us through Jesus’ shed blood on the cross, He sees us without blame. But this admonition is important because just like the previous admonition to be holy, being without blame, causes others to look at us and see something they don’t see in the multitude of lost souls of this world around us. Thus, those who were chosen before the foundation of the world are drawn to us because they want what they see we have when we live a life of integrity.

4. We walk before Him in love. This admonition seems as if it might be the easiest one of all to follow; yet, I suspect it is the most difficult. Sadly, most of us in western society have a convoluted idea of this word love. We’re told by our Greek scholars there are three words in the Greek that we translate into the word love; I think we miss the point when we begin delving into such distinctions. I think, in one sense, it’s a lot simpler than all that. I suspect God only had one thing in mind when He commanded us to love one another and that’s defined as well as it can be defined in I Corinthians 13. What we discover there is that God’s love is a choice, not an emotion. Godly emotions are the natural overflow of all right choices. When one leads with his emotions he usually gets belted on the chin.

Devine love is a test of the character of the one administering it. It has nothing to do with the character of the one being loved. Devine love is where the rubber meets the road in Christian theology. It doesn’t exist when there is no overt positive action on the part of the one loving. And that’s our thought for the day.

In Christ,
Brother Dave