Predestination and Ephesians 1: What Is It that God Predestines?

In my last blog post I examined Paul’s words in Romans 9 and their bearing upon the classic Reformed teaching about predestination—i.e. the notion that before the creation of the world God had already chosen some to be saved and some to be damned, and that these choices were based solely upon His sovereign will, and that furthermore, our human choices to accept or reject Christ were simply the outworking of God’s primordial decisions.  Those whom He chose to be saved He would draw to Himself so that they would accept Christ, and those whom He had chosen for damnation He would harden so that they would reject Christ.  Those teaching this often refer to Paul’s words in Ephesians 1 in support of their views, so we will examine that passage here.

       The passage reads as follows:  “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, even as He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before Him. In love He predestined [προορίζω] 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. In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace, which He lavished upon us, in all wisdom and insight making known to us the mystery of His will, according to His purpose, which He set forth in Christ as a plan for the fullness of time, to unite all things in Him, things in heaven and things on earth. In Him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined [προορίζω] according to the purpose of Him who works all things according to the counsel of His will, so that we who were the first to hope in Christ might be to the praise of His glory” (Ephesians 1:3-12).

       The important word in this long passage is προορίζω/ proorizo, here rendered “predestine”, meaning to pre-appoint.  The root is ορίζω/orizo, meaning “to appoint, to designate”. It is used in Acts 2:23 where it refers to God’s appointed plan that Christ should die for our sins, and in Acts 17:31 where it refers to Jesus as the One appointed by God to judge the living and the dead.  The προ-/ pro- part of προορίζω indicates the plan, appointment, or designation was not a last-minute panicky reaction to historical events, but was a part of God’s intention from before the foundation of the world. 

       This passage in Ephesians 1 must be read along with a similar passage in Romans 8, which reads:  “And we know that for those who love God all things work together for good, for those who are called according to His purpose.  For those whom He foreknew [προγινώσκω/ proginosko] He also predestined [προορίζω] to be conformed to the image of His Son, in order that He might be the firstborn among many brothers.  And those whom He predestined [προορίζω] He also called, and those whom He called He also justified, and those whom He justified He also glorified” (verses 28-30).

       The question of course is:  what is it that was pre-appointed by God?  The answer:  that we as the people of God should be
“conformed to the image of His Son”, so that Christ will be “the first-born of many brothers” (Romans 8:29).  Paul refers to this in Ephesians 1:5 as our “adoption as sons” (Greek υἱοθεσία/ uiothesia).  It is because we have become God’s adopted sons and Christ’s brothers that Paul also refers to this in Ephesians 1: 11 as being pre-appointed to “obtain an inheritance” as God’s sons and heirs.   

In other words, God’s pre-appointed plan for those whom He foreknew would believe in Christ was that they be transformed, becoming by grace what Christ was by nature.  God foreknew those who would be humble enough to accept Christ; those people He called and brought to Himself through the proclamation of the Gospel and then justified in the waters of baptism and then glorified through the gift of the Spirit (Romans 8:30).  (Note that the word “glorified” here is in the aorist tense, indicating a once-for-all action in the past.  It does not refer to a future glorification.)  

The emphasis throughout these passages is on the spiritual transformation undergone by those who accepted Christ:  once they were sinners, but now they are “holy and blameless before Him” (Ephesians 1:4).  Paul declares that God’s choice of destiny for us was set “before the foundation of the world”, because it was before the world began that this destiny for God’s people was decided.

It is important to read these declarations in their original context.  Paul was writing against the background of those who denied the Christian message and who said that the Christian movement and the conversions to Christ were simply a flash in the pan, and that the converts were deluded enthusiasts.  The whole movement would die out soon enough; it was a cultural “one-off”, and the apostles were charlatans taking advantage of the gullible.  The execution of Jesus was an unexpected and unforeseen tragedy, but then the world was full of such unforeseen tragedies, and Jesus’ death had no abiding significance such as the apostles said that it did. 

It is against this background of disdain that Paul asserts that the origin of the Christian movement, its spread, and its converts, were foreseen by God from before the world began.  (That is also what Peter meant when he asserted in 1 Peter 1:20 that Christ and His death had been “foreknown [Greek προγινώσκω] before the foundation of the world”.)  The world considered that the death of Christ and the spread of the Christian movement were fleeting sociological accidents; the apostles countered that they were the eternal plan of God.  God had foreknown all this; the experiences of the Christian converts was part of God’s plan for the fullness of time and the ends of the ages.  In these passages Paul was not stating the obvious or indulging in abstract theology; he was countering the accusations of their detractors.

It is also important to read these declarations against the background of Second Temple Judaism.  Many (if not most) Jews were expecting that the transformation that the Messiah would bring would be political and military—the Messiah would overthrow the Roman Empire, send the Gentiles packing, and exalt the nation of Israel to a place of political supremacy in the world.  That was the job of the Christ, and that was the nature of the long-expected Kingdom of God. 

In these declarations Paul is saying that this was not so.  The Kingdom of God was not political or military in nature; it was spiritual.  The destiny God chose for His people was not political supremacy, but interior transformation.  What was decided upon before the foundation of the world as Israel’s glorification was not the nation’s international hegemony, but that they would be changed and conformed to the image of Christ, and be holy and blameless before Him. 

In other words, in these passages Paul is not teaching that certain individuals were chosen to be saved and others were chosen to be damned.  He was teaching about the nature of the Kingdom of God.  He was insisting that the promised Kingdom, the glory pre-appointed for Israel, was not political dominion, but theosis.  It was this disputed nature of the Kingdom of God and the task of the Messiah that lurked in the background of Paul’s epistles and which constituted the main disagreement between Paul and his Jewish opponents. 

We take for granted now that the Kingdom of God is not political, but spiritual; that is why we can debate the theological details of our spiritual salvation, as Calvinists debate with Arminians.  But these were not the questions and the issues Paul was dealing with in the first century when he wrote these letters—he was grappling with the more basic issue of the very nature of the Kingdom of God and the work of the Messiah.  His letters and these declarations must be read in light of this grappling.  Paul’s Jewish opponents insisted that what was predestined from the ages was Israel’s international glory.  Paul countered that what was predestined was the interior transformation of the individual so that sinners became sons, and were conformed to the image of Christ.

Once one forgets the apostolic controversies of the first century and takes for granted the spiritual nature of the Kingdom, it becomes possible to read Paul’s comments about our predestined salvation in a way he never intended.  A sounder exegesis will return to the first century and read Paul in the way that his first readers did.

Finally:  Predestination:  Trampling the Tulip