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. (NIV)Paul said that God "chose us in him before the creation of the world." While this passage can be understood as meaning that God chose each of "us," individually, before the creation of the world, this is not the only way this verse can be understood. The weakness in this approach lies in the fact that it does not give any weight to the expression "in him" found in this verse. Another possible interpretation of this verse is that Paul was talking about God chosing us "in Christ," in which Christ is the eternal and concrete reality in his mind, and his reference to "us" is in the context of God's plan for the salvation of the world.
Paul's theology was Christocentric. In this sense, it is quite easy to think of Paul discussing God's plan for the salvation of the yet-to-be-formed mankind, and for him to have believed and taught that this plan was established before the creation of the world. For Paul, this plan involved Christ's earthly life, death and resurrection. Certainly, Christ's eternal pre-existence is not a difficult idea to accommodate within Paul's doctrine, since Paul thought of Christ as both eternal and divine. It is a quite different thing to consider that Paul thought that every single individual that has been born, or will be born, had some kind of eternal pre-existence, even in the mind of God. We might be able to conceive of such an idea, but the real question here is whether that is what Paul had in mind.
It is much easier to comprehend this statement along the lines that Paul believed and taught that God's plan meant that God predestined the salvation of mankind through Christ. This is more consistent with Paul's doctrine, as found here and elsewhere, rather than giving individuals some kind of quasi existence (in the mind of God) before the creation of the world. Indeed, Paul reveals that he had this in mind in Eph. 1:11-16, when he says:
In him we were also chosen, having been predestined according to the plan of him who works out everything in conformity with the purpose of his will, in order that we, who were the first to hope in Christ, might be for the praise of his glory. And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God's possession - to the praise of his glory. (NIV)
According to this interpretation, Paul can be considered to be talking about God's plan, and the certainty of its fulfilment in Christ. In exegesis of the passage, we can say that while we were corporately (but not individually) included in Christ from the foundation of the world, this becomes a reality for the individual when that individual hears, believes, and is marked with the seal of the Holy Spirit.
In 1 Peter 1:20 God's foreknowledge is even more clearly focussed on Christ, the lamb of God, who was chosen before the creation of the world, but revealed in these last times for our sakes. In Ephesians this foreknowledge is made more personal, saying that we were chosen “in Christ,” before the foundations of the world.
While it is possible that Paul was referring to our individual election before the foundation of the world, as is generally assumed,[1], this seems to me to give too great an importance to the individual in this passage, rather than following Paul’s emphasis, which is the exaltation of the role of Christ in the great drama of history. It is more likely that Paul had in mind a more corporate idea, closer to the text of 1 Peter, of Christ being the objective reality in the timeless past, with our individual adoption as sons and daughters of God, according to the will of God, being activated in the world of time.
Indeed, I believe that the current favoured exegesis of Ephesians 1, with its emphasis on individual predestination (before the creation of the world) puts too much focus on the individual, instead of being directed towards our corporate and shared involvement with Christ, as Paul taught in this passage.
Perhaps we should return to Paul's simple message: we are included in Christ at the moment when we believe. John also passed on a simple message from Jesus (John 3:16), saying that whoever believes in Jesus will not perish, but will have eternal life.
[1] Ernest Best, A Critical and Exegetical Commentary on Ephesians (Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1998), p.48, summed up the usual line of argument, “This does not imply they existed prior to their birth; God knows they will be born and determines what thereafter their lives will be.”
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