What do "elect" and "election" (eklektos, ekloge) mean?
Eklektos (ἐκλεκτός) means chosen; eklogē (ἐκλογή), a choosing. Scripture’s election is corporate and in Christ: God "hath chosen us in him" (Eph 1:4). The elect are those in the Chosen One, entered by faith.
What the text states
The words simply mean “chosen.” The question is not the vocabulary but the object: chosen to what, and how does one come to be among the chosen? Ephesians 1:4 answers both: chosen “in him,” in Christ, and one enters Christ by faith (Eph 1:13). Israel is called God's elect as a people (Isa 45:4); Christ is the Elect One (Isa 42:1, 1 Pet 2:6); the church is elect in Him.
Election is real and it is God's choice, but it is corporate and Christ-centered, not a pre-temporal list of individuals apart from the Chosen One.
Go deeper
Checked 2026-09-29 by Darren. 45 Scripture citations verified against the KJV rows. Every Strong's number in the wave-3 notes resolved against our own strongs_greek / strongs_hebrew and the lemma matched the form in the file. Wave 3. 45 quoted fragments table-passed against the verses table, all pass. 21 Greek and 3 Hebrew Strong's entries cross-checked against strongs_greek (5,523 rows) and strongs_hebrew (8,674). Three notes, none a form mismatch: (1) G2434 hilasmos is glossed in our table as 'atonement... an expiator', usage 'propitiation', so Strong's own wording is softer than the answer's 'not merely expiation'; Thayer and BDAG carry the propitiation sense and the KJV renders it so. (2) G728 is spelled arrhabon in our table (double rho) against the file's arrabon; the same word, a transliteration convention. (3) our table derives skenoo (G4637) from skenos (G4636), while the answer says it is built on skene (G4633); the three are cognate and skene is the LXX's tabernacle word. One reference in the wave-3 verification notes did not exist: Rev 22:24 (Revelation 22 ends at verse 21). Ruled by Darren 2026-09-29 a typo for Rev 22:17 and corrected in the source file. The hilasmos gloss discrepancy was ruled the same day: the answer stands and is not softened.
This answer is the short form. The argument is made at length in No Calvinist Election.