The
critical questions are how do we get “in Christ” and when do we get “in
Christ.” Christians could not all have been in Christ prior to creation by some
decree of God, or even prior to being born, because Paul says other Christians
were “in Christ before me.” (Romans 16:7) Paul even speaks of himself as a
spiritual father begetting people in Christ with reference to his evangelizing
people. He wrote to the Christians in Corinth: “For though ye have ten
thousand instructions in Christ, yet have ye not many fathers: for in Christ
Jesus I have begotten you through the gospel.” (1 Corinthians 4:15)
Similarly, Paul called Timothy his son (1 Corinthians 4:17; 2 Timothy 2:1) as
well as the runaway slave Onesimus: “I beseech thee for my son Onesimus, whom I
have begotten in my bonds.” (Philemon 10) So what we have is that people are
not placed in Christ before the foundation of the world, but instead, during
their lifetime and “through the gospel” when they trust Christ. And no one is
“chosen” in the sense of Ephesians 1:4 until they are “in Christ,” as reflected
in Paul’s salutation to Rufus: “Salute Rufus chosen in the Lord, and his mother
and mine.” (Romans 16:13)
With
this background in mind, let’s return to the passage at hand: “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.” Since we are placed “in him” in
time, as we respond to the gospel in faith, the phrase “chosen us in him”
cannot mean that all believers were placed “in him” before creation. In the
immediate context, Paul explains that his readers “trusted in Christ” after ye
heard . . . the gospel of your salvation: in whom also after that ye believed.”
(Ephesians 1:12-13) There was no salvation or deliverance in eternity past; but
in real time as they heard and believed the gospel. And as indicated earlier,
the blessing of being “chosen” that we receive once we are “in him" is not
justification as the Calvinists need it to be, but that “we should be holy and
without blame before” the Father. Both the “chosen” and the positional holiness
are only ours “in him” because Jesus is the holy one now stead “at his own
right hand in the heavenly places.” (Ephesians 1:20)
Someone
might try to salvage this verse as a proof text by arguing that the people were
not placed in Christ before creation, but were selected before creation to be
placed in Christ later or to become holy and blameless when they come to Christ
in faith. This view must be rejected because the verse says “chosen us in him
before . . .” and not “chosen us to be in him before . . .” If Paul were
suggesting that individuals were selected for salvation before the foundation
of the world, then the “in him” language here would have no meaning. Further,
Paul later states in relation to the Christian Gentiles in the church:
“Wherefore, remember, yet ye being in tme past Gentiles in the flesh, who are
called Uncircumcision by that which is called the Circumcision in the flesh
made by hands; That at that time ye were without Christ, being aliens from the
commonwealth of Israel, and strangers from the covenants of promise, having no
hope, and without God in the world: But now in Christ Jesus ye who sometimes
were far off are made nigh by the blood of Christ.” (Ephesians 1:11-13) If God
had already picked them for salvation before creation, then how could Paul say
that “in time past” they were “without Christ . . . having no hope, and without
God in the world?” But what the Bible says is that people become “in Christ”
when they become Christians, and so Paul’s statement in Ephesians 2:11-13 that
before they were Christians they were “without Christ” makes sense.
Jesus
is described in Revelation 13:8 as “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the
world.” God planned then for the reconciliation of lost sinners to himself in
Christ, and the benefits and blessings God planned in Christ becomes ours the
moment we respond in faith to the gospel and are placed in Christ. These
blessings are ours on the basis of who Christ is, what He accomplished, and His
position relative to the Father. The Calvinist view of Ephesians 1:4 that God
picked those He would save before creation is unsupportable. Instead, the view
that does justice to the context and comports with the large body of positional
“in Christ” truths throughout Paul’s writings is that God made the decision
before creation that all Christians would be positionally holy and blameless
before Him in love, just as Jesus is holy and blameless and seated before the
Father. We get in on the benefit of this decision the moment we place faith in
Christ and are placed “in him.” Recalling that “chosen” (reek ekelgomai)
can have the meaning “to make choice in accordance with significant
preference.” This definition makes good sense of the context here. The passage
does not say God chose individuals before they existed but that they receive
the blessing of His decision in Christ (positional holiness) once they are in
Christ, the one who is holy and blameless before the Father. Paul similarly
stated in Ephesians 1:11 that in Christ (“in whom”) “we have obtained an
inheritance.” Again, Paul expresses a past-tense reality that becomes our
spiritual blessing once we trust Christ and therefore are in him. Paul also
wrote in Ephesians 2:6 that God “hath raised us up together” with Christ, but
he did not mean that we were resurrected before we were born. Paul speaks of
positional truths here—it is the self-existent Jesus that was before the
foundation of the world and that we can identify with now by faith to get in on
“all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ.”
We
should note that, in the Greek, verses 3 through 14 constitute a single
sentence. We do not have to look far to see how we can appropriate the manifold
blessings available in Christ: “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) The closest Pauline parallel to Ephesians 1:3 elsewhere is 2 Timothy
1:9-10, which also supports this interpretation: “Who hath saved us, and called
us with an holy calling, not according to our works, but according to
his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before the
world began, but is now made manifest by the appearing of our Savior Jesus
Christ, who bath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to
light through the gospel.” As with the Ephesians passage, the sphere of
blessing is once again “in Christ Jesus.” Paul does not teach that believers
were given something before they existed to receive it. Rather, God’s
redemptive plan, the grace of God towards sinners, was in Christ before time,
and later manifested when the God-man died on the cross and was resurrected,
conquering death and making eternal life available “through the gospel” (not
election). (Hutson Smelley, Deconstructing Calvinism: A Biblical Analysis
and Refutation [3rd ed.; 2019], 170-74)
