Ephesians 1:3-4
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us in Christ with every spiritual blessings in the heavenly places, even as he chose us in Him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and blameless before him.
Having recently checked out a book from the library by Ben Witherington (III) called The Problem With Evangelical Theology: Testing the Exegetical Foundations of Calvinism, Dispensationalism and Weslyanism, I discovered a very insightful comment by BW3 in one of his footnotes. On page 83 in the fourth chapter (Awaiting the Election Results), he notes that:
- Beginning at Ephesians 1:4, Paul talks about the concept of election. The key phrase to understanding what he means by this concept is in Him or in Christ.
- See the summary of usage in H. Hoehner, Ephesians: An Exegetical Commentary (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2003), 173-74. He rightly concludes that we do have the local sense here. The problem with his treatment is that he tries to impose grammatical precision on an epideitic sermon which involves the language of the heart in long, effusive sentences. This is like trying to impose mathematical precision on the meter of a poem or song. Hoehner is trying to argue that the text must mean God chose "us" before the world began because the grammatical diagram of the sentence suggests such a conclusion. As Hoehner admits, however, even Calvin seems to have agreed that God's choosing "us in Christ" means Christ is the Elect One chosen before the world began and believers are "in Him." Barth's view is of the same ilk as Calvin's.
Be sure and pick up the book brothers and sisters-- I suspect that many of you will thoroughly enjoy it.