Q & A Sunday // Ephesians 1-3 Meadowbrooke Church
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- Christianity
Questions from Ephesians 1:1-3:21
If God chose me before the foundation of the world? Do I really have free will?
Yes. But the real question is this: Is your free will limited to your spiritual condition? In the second sermon of our Ephesian series, I preached an entire sermon on the infamous Ephesians 1:4-6, and in that sermon, I answered what it meant to be chosen by God, here is what I said: To be chosen means that God predestined you to something. Predestination means, to determine something ahead of time before its occurrence.[1] So, according to these verses, before God invented dirt, He planned for your adoption as a son or daughter through all that Jesus would do on your account for your sin on a cross that we all deserved.
It is very difficult, within the context of Ephesians to explain Ephesians 1:4-6 any other way than to take at face value the clear and direct language he used in these verses; Paul could not have been any clearer: He chose us in Him [Jesus] before the foundation of the world He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will. So, where is our free will in these verses? I will tell you where it is; your free will is somewhere between Ephesians 1:4 and 2:10.
We are chosen before the foundation of the world according to Ephesians 1:4, we were dead in our offenses and sins according to Ephesians 2:1, and it is, by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God according to Ephesians 2:8. The in-between in these verses is that you were born and lived before Jesus in your spiritual deadness, and your will was only free to operate within the nature of your spiritual deadness, until Ephesians 2:4-5 happened to you, which was this: But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ.
So, here is how your free will expressed itself while you were dead in your offenses and sins: you previously walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all previously lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the rest (vv. 2-3). In Ephesians 2:2-3 we are given a list of how our free will expressed itself:
We followed the prince of the power of the air (the devil).
We were disobedient.
We lived in the lusts of our flesh.
We indulged the desire of our flesh and mind.
We were children of wrath.
I dont know any other way to understand Ephesians 1:4-6 and 2:1-3 than to read 1:4 at face value: He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. There was no other way for God to save us than to do what we are told that He did in Ephesians 2:4-5, But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ.
Now listen to me: God made us alive, but He did not believe for us! What this means is that your will was once limited to your spiritual deadness until God made you alive in Christ. The thing that God did for you in Ephesians 2:5-6, enabled you to experience and participate in what Paul describes in 2:8, which states: For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.
If God chooses who will be saved before the foundation of the world, why did He command His disciples: Go and make disciples of all nations and to, teach them to follow all that I commanded (Matt. 28:19-20)?
The reason why Jesus has commanded His disciples to make disciples of all nations and the reason that it is a sin not to do so, is because the way He has chosen to make the spiritually dead, alive in Christ is through His Word proclaimed through y
Questions from Ephesians 1:1-3:21
If God chose me before the foundation of the world? Do I really have free will?
Yes. But the real question is this: Is your free will limited to your spiritual condition? In the second sermon of our Ephesian series, I preached an entire sermon on the infamous Ephesians 1:4-6, and in that sermon, I answered what it meant to be chosen by God, here is what I said: To be chosen means that God predestined you to something. Predestination means, to determine something ahead of time before its occurrence.[1] So, according to these verses, before God invented dirt, He planned for your adoption as a son or daughter through all that Jesus would do on your account for your sin on a cross that we all deserved.
It is very difficult, within the context of Ephesians to explain Ephesians 1:4-6 any other way than to take at face value the clear and direct language he used in these verses; Paul could not have been any clearer: He chose us in Him [Jesus] before the foundation of the world He predestined us to adoption as sons and daughters through Jesus Christ to Himself, according to the good pleasure of His will. So, where is our free will in these verses? I will tell you where it is; your free will is somewhere between Ephesians 1:4 and 2:10.
We are chosen before the foundation of the world according to Ephesians 1:4, we were dead in our offenses and sins according to Ephesians 2:1, and it is, by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God according to Ephesians 2:8. The in-between in these verses is that you were born and lived before Jesus in your spiritual deadness, and your will was only free to operate within the nature of your spiritual deadness, until Ephesians 2:4-5 happened to you, which was this: But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ.
So, here is how your free will expressed itself while you were dead in your offenses and sins: you previously walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all previously lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, just as the rest (vv. 2-3). In Ephesians 2:2-3 we are given a list of how our free will expressed itself:
We followed the prince of the power of the air (the devil).
We were disobedient.
We lived in the lusts of our flesh.
We indulged the desire of our flesh and mind.
We were children of wrath.
I dont know any other way to understand Ephesians 1:4-6 and 2:1-3 than to read 1:4 at face value: He chose us in Him before the foundation of the world. There was no other way for God to save us than to do what we are told that He did in Ephesians 2:4-5, But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our wrongdoings, made us alive together with Christ.
Now listen to me: God made us alive, but He did not believe for us! What this means is that your will was once limited to your spiritual deadness until God made you alive in Christ. The thing that God did for you in Ephesians 2:5-6, enabled you to experience and participate in what Paul describes in 2:8, which states: For by grace you have been saved through faith; and this is not of yourselves, it is the gift of God.
If God chooses who will be saved before the foundation of the world, why did He command His disciples: Go and make disciples of all nations and to, teach them to follow all that I commanded (Matt. 28:19-20)?
The reason why Jesus has commanded His disciples to make disciples of all nations and the reason that it is a sin not to do so, is because the way He has chosen to make the spiritually dead, alive in Christ is through His Word proclaimed through y