Ephesians 1:3-14

William F. Schnell

July 12, 2009

One of the supreme humiliations of childhood for a non-athletic fellow such as myself occurred when it came time to choose up sides for sandlot baseball, backyard football or pick-up basketball games. You know the drill. Two jocks alternate in choosing from a group who is going to be on whose team. Of course they begin by choosing the ones they think can best play the game at hand. But regardless of the game, I am always praying not to be the last guy standing—a group of one who cannot play any game well that involves a ball. Maybe that is why I have grown up to be such an inclusive guy, because I know the pain of being excluded. So when it comes time to throw a garden party at home, the whole church is chosen to attend.

The title of our message for this morning is, "Chosen." It is the first message in a four sermon series from Paul’s letter to the Ephesians, which is actually a misleading title for this biblical book. The earliest manuscripts do not refer to this letter as Ephesians at all. It is not a letter to a particular church addressing particular issues in that church, such as with Corinthians or Colossians. It is a letter to Christians in general which was meant to be circulated among many churches in the Roman province of Asia, of which Ephesus was the capital.

Not being restricted by church problems to be resolved, Paul is freed to become a bit more reflective about the deeper mysteries of the faith and God’s plan of salvation. Translation: He gets exceedingly convoluted in expressing his ideas. A case in point is our text for this morning which, in the original Greek, is a single sentence. That’s right; our text of 11 verses should only be punctuated with a single period at its end. If any here today can recite it in a single breath I will gladly buy their breakfast after church at Nicky & Smitty’s.

The text begins: Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in the heavenly realms with every spiritual blessing in Christ (Verse 3). Sound familiar? Every Sunday we sing a little ditty called a doxology which begins, "Praise God from whom all blessings flow." Biblical scholars have labeled our text an early doxology of the Christian Church cast in the form of a Jewish berakah, or blessing. So far so good, but then things get a little controversial.

For he chose us in him before the creation of the world to be holy and blameless in his sight. In love he predestined us to be adopted as his sons through Jesus Christ, in accordance with his pleasure and will... (Verses 4-5). He chose us and he predestined us. There is stream of Protestantism called Calvinism, so named for its progenitor, John Calvin (who happened to celebrate his 500^th birthday two days ago). Calvinism is best known for its doctrines of predestination and total depravity.

Total depravity teaches us that all people are totally depraved and unworthy of salvation. However God, in his mercy, chooses to save some by his grace. Some are chosen and others are not. This is the Calvinist doctrine of predestination in a nutshell. Some totally depraved people are predestined by God for salvation and others are predestined for damnation. So if a totally depraved Rev. Horak and I are driving somewhere in his new car and we get hit by a cement truck and die, and we arrive at the pearly gates before the Judge and he gets in and I don’t—I have a problem with that theology.

I don’t think it paints a very flattering picture of the Almighty. I think it makes him look capricious and cruel as he favors some of his children over others. Wouldn’t a loving father choose to save all his children if it was within his power to do so? And yet the words "chosen" and "predestined" are in our text not once but twice. What are we to make of them? Is there any other way to understand them besides the classical Calvinist way?

I think there is, and I think it becomes clearer as we understand who Paul is and who his intended audience is. Paul is a Jew. He is a member of God’s Chosen People. That is how the Jews thought of themselves, and it was a self-understanding supported by their sacred scriptures. Among all the nations on the earth God chose to establish his everlasting covenant with the Israelites. He chose to set his affection upon them. He chose to love them. They were his Chosen People.

What does that make the rest of us, chopped liver? Not according to St. Paul. In Christ God established a new covenant with his Chosen People. Only now membership in his Chosen People was not by genetic descent as it had been understood by the Jews. It was, rather, by faith. Without faith, being of Jewish descent was of no account. With faith, even Gentiles (non-Jews) could be members of God’s Chosen People. Paul is writing our text to Gentiles.

To them he writes, And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation (Verse 13). In Christ, Gentiles were also included in God’s plan of salvation. That meant that Gentiles were predestined for glory. They might have to wander through the wilderness for a season, but their final destination was predetermined—the Promised Land. They might have to take up a cross now and again, but only so that God could raise them with Jesus to something new and better.

The great good news of the Gospel is that people of faith were predestined for glory regardless of racial background, national heritage, gender, socio-economic status or any other human distinction. So what at first sounds exclusive with all the talk about being chosen and predestined is really radically inclusive once we understand who is saying what to whom: Paul, a Jew, is speaking to Gentiles, or non-Jews. They are included in God’s plan of salvation. They are predestined for glory. They are chosen.

How good would this good news sound for the Gentiles to whom Paul was writing? Well, we almost have to have felt excluded or left out to understand. A few weeks ago I was invited to sit in on a radio talk show at WNIR hosted by our own Bob Early. All kinds of folks called in--from an atheist who was mad about the property tax break extended to houses of worship, to end times enthusiasts looking for Jesus to return at any moment. Even some of our members called in with their questions and comments.

In the midst of all these calls there were some "grace moments" that stood out. One woman called whose son had been a police officer killed, I believe, in the line of duty. This woman had been raised Catholic, but had fallen away from church early in life so that her son had never been baptized. Now that he had died, she was worried about his soul. Would he be kept from heaven because he had not been baptized? Clearly, we had a very concerned mother on the phone who cared deeply for her son—a son she described as "a very good and loving person."

Here is how I responded to that woman. I said, "Baptism is an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace. What matters to God is the inward and spiritual grace. Indeed, without the inward and spiritual grace the outward and visible sign means nothing. A wedding is an outward and visible sign of the inward and spiritual grace we call a marriage. Prince Charles and Lady Di had a royal wedding, but a lousy marriage. If you had to choose between having a royal wedding or a real marriage—between having the outward and visible sign and the inward and spiritual grace, which would you choose?"

Of course most of us would choose to have both. But this woman, if she had to choose, would have chosen to have a marriage. I continued, "You have described your son as a good and loving person. To that I would add that he was blessed to have a good and loving mother who cared for him. That is what matters to God. I wish he would have been baptized, if only to spare you the needless worry you have suffered since his passing. But I don’t think you have anything to worry about. I think one day you and your son will meet in the bliss of heaven, never to part again."

This woman sounded so emotionally relieved to hear from a Pastor that her son was included in God’s plan of salvation and among the Chosen People of God that Bob Early’s wife texted him immediately to say, "That was a powerful moment." That is how good the good news of the Gospel can be for those who may have been made to feel excluded from the Kingdom of God because they didn’t get this religious card punched or believe that doctrinal proposition.

Indeed the next day a self-professing Christian woman who had listened to the broadcast was so prompted by the love of Jesus that she emailed Bob to say both he and I were surely going to spend eternity in hell together. I have to admit feeling a little guilty dragging Bob into hell with me, but apparently neither of us was religiously exclusive enough for this woman. I only wish she would have called in to share her opinion so that I could have responded to it over the airwaves.

Here is what I would have told her. "Well, at least Bob and I know what it feels like to be you. Because according to most of the world’s 1.5 billion Muslims hell is where you are going to spend eternity. And if your particular brand of Christianity doesn’t happen to be Roman Catholic, a good many of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics would assign you to hell for eternity. Or, if you are Catholic, I am sure that we could find a billion or so from among the fragmented Protestant churches who would write a papist off as hell-bound. I don’t care what your religious persuasion happens to be, you are going straight to hell according to the vast mass of humanity. So I wouldn’t let it bother you anymore than I am letting you bother me."

Those the world rejects, Jesus has chosen—the tax collector and sinner, the Samaritan and Centurion, the leper and demon-possessed. This is the good news of the Gospel for us according to St. Paul, a fellow who had been on both the giving and receiving end of religious rejection and could speak from the voice of experience. We are included in God’s plan of salvation. We are predestined for glory so long as we keep the faith (and we are going to learn what that means as our series of sermons unfolds). We are God’s people—the chosen of the Lord.