The Address of Election

What this will do for you

Someone tells you God chose who would be saved before the world began, and hands you Ephesians 1:4. “He hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world.” There it is. Chosen. Before the foundation. What is left to say?

Two words are left to say, and they are in the verse. In him.

I am going to show you that those two words run through the whole letter, that they name a place, and that the people who quote the verse quote those words too. They locate election in Christ. So do I. Where we part is what “in Christ” means and how a person comes to stand there. The letter gives its own answer to the second, in the same chapter, nine verses after the choosing.

By the end you will be able to say “chosen in him” and “after that ye believed” in one breath, from the same chapter, and know that you are reading the letter the way the letter reads itself. This essay is the one letter. Its companion, There Is No Calvinist Election in the Bible, is the word across the whole canon, every occurrence in two languages, three texts, and it should be read first. This one is where that essay stops: the letter they hand you, and what it says about how you got in.

One rule, before we start

Read the whole letter, and count. Not what a verse could mean. What the letter says, how many times, and where.

Exhibit one: in him, thirty-four times

Ephesians is a short letter. Six chapters. And one phrase runs through it thirty-four times.

In Christ. In him. In whom. In the Lord.

I counted every one where the phrase points at Christ. Thirty-four in six chapters, twenty-two naming him outright and twelve pronouns that point back to Christ, every one listed so you can check it. Chapter 1 alone carries it twelve times in twenty-three verses.

“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.” (Ephesians 1:3)

“According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world.” (1:4)

“In whom we have redemption through his blood.” (1:7)

“In whom also we have obtained an inheritance.” (1:11)

“In whom ye also trusted... in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed.” (1:13)

Blessed in Christ. Chosen in him. Redeemed in whom. Inheritance in whom. Trusted in whom. Sealed in whom.

The phrase does not do one thing every time. But its dominant use in this letter is the one those five share: everything God gives, he gives to people who are in his Son. The blessings have a location, and the location is a Person. That location is not the other side's private property. It is Paul's, and it is yours.

Exhibit two: chosen where, and chosen as what

Read the election verse to the end of its sentence.

“According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.” (Ephesians 1:4)

Three things are on the page. Chosen. In him. That we should be holy. A location and a purpose, and no stated basis in us. Nobody is chosen for being good. Both sides say that, and both sides say election is in Christ.

So the question is what “in Christ” means when God chooses, and this is the position I hold, in plain words, so you can hold it too.

Election in this letter is corporate. God chose a people in his Son before the world, and the people is the Church, the Body of which Christ is the Head. A person enters the Church as an individual, by faith, in time. Once he is in it, everything said of the chosen is said of him, because he is in the One it was said of. Chosen in him means chosen as a member of the Church that is in him.

You are allowed to read it that way. The rest of this essay is why the Book reads it that way, and why this letter does.

Exhibit three: the Book already uses the word this way

Frank's rule was twenty verses either side. For a word this loaded, the rule is every place the Bible uses it, and I have done that in its own essay: every occurrence of the family in Hebrew, Septuagint, and Greek, two hundred forty-seven of them, classified, with the noun “election” read in all seven of its uses. That essay is There Is No Calvinist Election in the Bible, and the count is on its audit page. The short form is three groups.

Scripture calls three groups elect.

The angels. “I charge thee before God, and the Lord Jesus Christ, and the elect angels.” (1 Timothy 5:21) The text names the ones who stayed and, in Jude 6, tells you the others left. It narrates no decree assigning who would fall. Nothing in either verse ties the word to salvation.

Israel. “For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel mine elect.” (Isaiah 45:4) Bechiri, and three chapters earlier the Servant himself is bechiri, “mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth” (42:1). A nation chosen to carry the promise, inside which individuals were cut off for breaking the covenant. “as touching the election, they are beloved for the fathers' sakes.” (Romans 11:28) Corporate, held by God, and not a guarantee for every man born into it.

The Church. “But ye are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, an holy nation, a peculiar people.” (1 Peter 2:9) Peter is quoting Exodus 19:6, Israel's words at Sinai, and giving them to the Body. And the Church is the ekklesia (G1577), which Ephesians names nine times, including 1:22, “the church, which is his body.” The “us” God chose in him is the Church.

Three groups, one pattern: a people called to a role, and standing inside it is not automatic. You are in the third the same way the first two work. How a person comes to stand there is 1:13 and 3:6, and I will argue it there, not here.

And the verb itself. “Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?” (John 6:70) The verb Paul uses of the Church in Ephesians 1:4 is the verb Jesus uses of the twelve, and Judas is inside it. Forty named men in Scripture are chosen by name, and every one is chosen to a task. That table is on the God Chose Judas page. Rob Congdon put it in one sentence: three groups in the Bible are called elect, and in all three it refers to a group serving God.

So when Paul writes “chosen us in him,” you are not asking the word to mean something new. You are reading it the way the Book reads it everywhere else. The burden is to show that this “us” is a roster rather than the Church the letter names. Ephesians does not carry that. It keeps one phrase and names one joining instrument, and that is the rest of this essay.

The verses they will bring

This stretch is for the day someone tells you the count is sloppy. Their best texts, in their strength, and where each one lands.

Romans 9 and 11. “For they are not all Israel, which are of Israel.” (9:6) “that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works.” (9:11) “there is a remnant according to the election of grace.” (11:5) “the election hath obtained it, and the rest were blinded.” (11:7) There is the list inside the people, they will say. Two things. 9:11 is Jacob before Esau, before works, the line chosen before birth, and it is not of works; faith is not a work either, Paul says so at 4:5, and the Grammar of Romans essay walks 9:11 with Malachi's Edom beside it. The remnant verses are how the cut appears inside Israel, and Paul says what it runs on: “Because they sought it not by faith.” (9:32) “because of unbelief they were broken off.” (11:20) “if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be graffed in.” (11:23) A cut inside the elect nation, drawn on faith, with a because and an if.

2 Thessalonians 2:13. “God hath from the beginning chosen you to salvation through sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.” Chosen to salvation, in English, and this is where the confessions' phrase comes from. The verb is heileto, from haireo (G138), an ordinary word for choosing that is not the election family. Read the sentence to its end and the verses around it. The means are in the same breath: through the Spirit's sanctifying, and belief of the truth. Three verses earlier the perishing are named: they “received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved” (2:10), and “believed not the truth” (2:12). One verse later: “Whereunto he called you by our gospel” (2:14). The passage draws its own line between the saved and the lost, and the line is belief of the truth against refusal of it. The “you” chosen to salvation is a church, chosen through the very belief the perishing withheld, and two verses on it is told to “stand fast” (2:15).

Romans 8:33, “God's elect,” names the people 8:28 and 8:29 have already named, “them that love God,” “whom he did foreknow.” John 6:37, “All that the Father giveth me shall come to me,” is their strongest text outside Paul; in the same discourse Jesus glosses the giving as hearing and learning, “Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto me” (6:45), and it still deserves its own essay.

2 Timothy 2:10. “I endure all things for the elect's sakes, that they may also obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus.” The other side reads it as elect before saved, so election apart from salvation. Read the chapter around it. The means is the verse before, “the word of God is not bound” (2:9). The elect are named by the Lord's knowledge and their own conduct in one verse, “The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity” (2:19). And the word is fenced by conditions on the same people: “if we deny him, he also will deny us” (2:12), “If a man therefore purge himself” (2:21). Elect before saved, yes. Elect apart from response, the chapter never says.

None of this finishes the count. It says their texts were not left off the table. Three groups tells you who the Bible calls elect. It does not, by itself, settle whether the “us” of Ephesians 1:4 is a Church joined by the gospel or a definite number contemplated in the Head. That question belongs to the letter, and the letter takes it up at 3:6.

Exhibit four: what they hold, in their words

Election is in Christ from eternity. God chose particular persons, a definite number, in Christ as their Head, so that Christ is the one in whom they were contemplated when chosen. In time, the Spirit unites those persons to Christ by a faith given to them. Sealing follows faith. Holiness is the purpose of election, never its ground. Dort's Article 7 says it exactly: God chose “a definite number of particular people.”

Calvin, on this verse, and I want his whole thought:

“In Christ. This is the second proof that the election is free; for if we are chosen in Christ, it is not of ourselves. It is not from a perception of anything that we deserve, but because our heavenly Father has introduced us, through the privilege of adoption, into the body of Christ. In short, the name of Christ excludes all merit.”

Calvin asks where, and answers: in the body of Christ, by adoption, the Father's act. That is his account of agency, and I leave it his. So the tradition did not skip the address. It located election in the Son. In its election articles, Westminster and Dort cite verses 4, 5, 9, and 11 of this chapter, not 13, and they read 1:13 as the Spirit's mark on those already elect.

That is the difference. They answer “where” from the decree. The letter answers “where,” and then keeps going.

Exhibit five: predestined to what

“Having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ to himself.” (1:5)

“In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.” (1:11)

Adoption. Inheritance. Romans 8:29 adds a third, “to be conformed to the image of his Son.” Three statements of what the predestined are predestined to, and each names a destination. None names the act of believing. They will say faith is among the appointed means, and Westminster says so. My point is narrower: where Paul writes what predestination is toward, he writes where the chosen are headed. How they come to be in him he writes at 1:13.

Exhibit six: how a person comes to be in him

If “in him” is one location and not two, the letter has to say how a person comes to be in it. It does, in one verse, in order.

“In whom ye also trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed with that holy Spirit of promise.” (Ephesians 1:13)

Heard. Believed. Sealed. The hearing is the gospel preached. The believing is something the hearers do; they are the ones the verse says believed. The sealing is God's, and it follows.

This verse establishes that the sealing comes after the believing. That is what it establishes by itself. It does not alone settle whether faith is first in the man or first in God, and the tradition will say the Spirit's inward work precedes the believing. That is the debate, and this verse does not close it. What it does is give the letter's own order for the people it calls “ye also.”

And for who the “us” is, the letter has one more verse.

“That the Gentiles should be fellowheirs, and of the same body, and partakers of his promise in Christ by the gospel.” (Ephesians 3:6)

Of the same body, by the gospel. Paul names the tool by which the Body gets its members, and the tool is the gospel. It does not by itself deny a prior numbering; Dort will say the gospel is the means by which a set number, already given, are gathered. Mine is that Paul, asked how the Body is joined, named the gospel and not the number. Together, 1:13 and 3:6 are the letter's own account of membership, and it runs through hearing.

Their hardest verse in this letter, read exactly

“In whom also we have obtained an inheritance, being predestinated according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his own will.” (Ephesians 1:11)

Worketh all things. God works all things after the counsel of his own will, and nothing falls outside that counsel, including who believes. I say so without a hedge, and you can too. You do not have to flinch at this verse.

Now read the rest of it. In whom. The inheritance is obtained in him. The people are heirs, receiving. The verse states the scope of the counsel, all things. It does not state the mode by which God works who believes. The Reformed reading supplies one: God works the believing itself. I read a third option, and it is not a retreat from the grant: God's counsel includes a genuine offer and a genuine answer, foreknown and enabled by him, and he works all things including that men are asked and that their answer is their own. The counsel is not smaller than the invitation. It contains it.

Two more, read to their end

They will bring 2:1, “And you hath he quickened, who were dead in trespasses and sins;” and say dead men do not believe. The dead in 2:1 “walked” in 2:2, so the death is not inactivity; it is inability Godward, and nobody comes unaided. Then 2:5, their real text: “Even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ.” Union and life given to people who could not give it to themselves. Now read where the sentence lands: “For by grace are ye saved through faith.” (2:8) Neither verse orders quickening and faith. 2:5 states a union; 2:8 states a relation, through faith. The reading that puts regeneration first brings a sequence to a passage that gives a relation. I decline to bring one in either direction.

And the last words of 2:8, “and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God.” “That” and “faith” are different genders in Greek, the way “it” cannot point at “her” in English, so “that” cannot be pointing at faith, and careful Reformed scholars say so. “That” points at the whole, salvation by grace through faith. Whether faith is a gift is argued from other texts, Philippians 1:29 and Acts 13:48 among them, and the Romans essay answers those where they live.

Where that leaves election

Located, and entered.

Election in Ephesians has an address, and Paul gives it thirty-four times. Both sides read it. Both locate election in the Son. The difference is what the Son contains. They read particular persons, contemplated in him from eternity, brought in by a faith given only to them. I read a Church, chosen in its Head before the world, joined by the gospel, and sealed after believing.

I do not claim the preposition in 1:4 decides it. I claim the letter leans, by two verses: 1:13 gives the order, 3:6 gives the instrument. Read with the whole letter using one phrase, in him, for the choosing, the redeeming, and the sealing, and never marking that it has changed kinds, they lean toward a Body entered by the gospel rather than a number filled by it. That is a reading, and I am naming it as one. The other reading has to hold that Paul meant two different “in him”s with one phrase and never said so.

The verdict

He chose us in him.

They located it there. So do we.

Then the letter said how those now standing there came to stand there.

Heard. Believed. Sealed.

By the gospel.

“in whom also after that ye believed, ye were sealed.” (Ephesians 1:13)

Stand on that. You are reading the same address they read, and you are reading it to the end of the chapter. You do not have to win their argument first. The letter is enough.

Scripture quoted from the King James Version, verified against the verses table. Greek forms verified against the tagged Greek New Testament (STEPBible TAGNT, CC BY 4.0). Calvin quoted from his commentary on Ephesians; the Canons of Dort quoted in the Christian Reformed Church translation; the Westminster Confession from its text with Scripture proofs.