The upshot of the truth about our predestination that Paul addresses in Ephesians 1 is that God is always the initiator, and we are always in the position of response. That is why this truth is so important and why we dare not try to interpret it down so that it makes more sense to us. The reason why you are a Christian is because God chose you. It wasn’t at your initiation that you were saved but at God’s. It is for us now to respond to what he has done. The first response to this truth should not be to try and figure out how this coheres logically with the issue of human choice and free will. As I have said, it doesn’t need to be logical. The right response is for us to praise and thank God for saving us when we couldn’t save ourselves. As Paul says here in Ephesians 2, we were dead, and God made us alive. Dead people do not choose to be raised up; they cannot choose to be raised up, precisely because they are dead. Paul doesn’t say that we were unwell in our transgressions and were raised up after we called on him in faith. No, he says that we were dead, and that God made us alive. He even gave us the faith with which we then reached out to God . Paul’s point in sharing this mind-twisting truth is to nail down the idea that salvation is all of God and not earned or warranted by us in any way. It is all by grace.
It is all thanks to God that we are saved so let’s offer up that thanks.
Read Ephesians 2:1-10
